But the Mechanical Layer 1 doesn't have anything to do with component footprints! I don't use Mechanical Layer 1 for anything other than adding physical board information. Having removed Mechanical Layer 1 the board works fine, positions correctly on printouts and also on the screen (it would never fill the available window). The problem is something to do with a `thing' existing on Mechanical Layer 1. If it had been locked to a component then surely I would have now lost that component or have an error with it given that I told protel to delete that layer and anything on it.
Best Regards (Mr) Laurie Biddulph Mobile: 0400 257 645 Elby Designs ABN: 70 022 727 605 http://www.elby-designs.com This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended for the addressee only. If you are not the addressee you may not copy, forward, disclose or otherwise use it, or any part of it, in any form whatsoever. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender and ensure that all copies of this e-mail and any files transmitted with it are deleted. Any views or opinions represented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Elby Designs. Although this e-mail and its attachments have been scanned for the presence of computer viruses, Elby Designs will not be liable for any losses as a result of any viruses being passed on. ----- Original Message ----- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax To: Protel EDA Discussion List Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 10:27 AM Subject: Re: [PEDA] Something off the board At 03:25 PM 5/24/2006, Laurie Biddulph wrote: >I can assure you that I did do that many times. Every time the >program indicated that there was nothing to delete (Delete option was greyed). You assume that the stray primitive can be deleted just like that. What if it is part of a footprint, and it is locked? Another possibility is that component extents have somehow gotten miscalculated. I won't go into all the arcane details -- I don't remember all the details -- but Protel keeps a statistic with each component (strictly speaking, with each placed footprint) that is the coordinates of a box containing all the primitives of the component. This can get a little ... hairy ..., strings, in particular, have a dimension which depends on the string text. Protel will actually display the extent box if you pick up the footprint and move it quickly enough, particularly if there are a lot of primitives in it. It stops displaying the individual primitives and continuously updating the display, and instead just displays the extent box. Same thing with block moves. If you pick up a selected block and wave it, and it contains enough primitives, the extent box will be displayed. If you had everything inside the board selected, and you pick up the selection, you should see the true extents box. My guess is that it is going to extent off the board.... This, in fact, used to be the fastest way to find stray primitives. If you can get them selected, and you place a primitive, say a pad, inside the workspace, you can pick up the pad and whatever else is selected. You can use this to move them into the workspace. But if they are locked, this isn't going to work. You might unlock all footprints (only temporarily, of course) and see if this changes the behavior. Extents are used to quickly determine what areas of the board need to be examined for conflicts, for example, when moving components. And, I expect, they are used to determine how to scale and where to place a print so that all parts of the board are on the print. Thus a miscalculated extent could produce the effect that you have described. There is a value, somewhere, for Board Extents, I forget where you would look for it. (It may be simply in the ASCII database.) If it's got wild numbers in it, you know something is off.... A search of the ASCII database for numbers out of range is a brute force method of finding such things, and this would find a component extent error. How to do this is beyond the scope of this post, but essentially, the Protel ASCII database has field delimiters of "|", and using that, you can load the board file into Excel, and then you can run comparison operators on the location fields. But is it worth the effort? Not necessarily. If this happens again, you might simply look at the footprints. One thing I've seen more than once is a footprint with a reference point in the wild blue yonder, or, it is also possible, with a stray primitive, perhaps on a mech or other layer that might not be visible. ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
