Terry. Welcome to the world of Protel.
If you are only waiting 6 seconds for each "Analyzing GND" session, consider yourself extremely lucky. I have done boards that would take several minutes each time it would go "south for the winter" on an "Analyzing" session. This is my all time favorite Protel "tie the computer in a knot" trick. This is where I have even gone into the "Task Manager", only to have it tell me that Protel is "not responding", and then have Protel reemerge fine and still operatring properly after I walked away and took a very long coffee break. According to the Protel people that I talked to a little over a year ago, there is absolutely nothing that you can do about this one, except get up, and take a walk around the building each time it happens. I have had people make the suggestion to rename all of the nets, and I think that I may have even tried to do that, all to no avail. I have also had people tell me to turn off all "on line" DRC checking, but if I remember correctly, that didn't work either (or possibly it did, but left me to make such mistakes that I gave up on it). This is the one real time consuming bummer that I could never get around, and the one place where my systems would be most prone to crashing. The only answer that I have ever found was to delete all of the Polygon Planes, and always make them the last thing I do (although I do not think that that would not be the answer in your case with your 35 plane segments). I often wondered whether or not transferring all of the plane segments to a mechanical layer (or possibly just any "different" or "unused" layer) while working would allow me to skirt the problem, although every time I got to the point in the project where this became a problem, I never had the time to experiment with it. I have also wondered whether or not changing the resolution of the internal "segments" of the plane would have any effect, since it seems to go thru all of the small line segments of the plane and check them all, which I think is why it may take so long. This would in itself take alot of time with 35 plane segments. A faster machine is the closest I ever came to solving the problem, but even on a 2 GHz P4 with a 400 MHz bus, the problem is still there, although not as bad. This is one of those things that has even been brought up several times not only here (PEDA), but if I remember correctly, also in the DXP forums, all to no avail (Again, if I remember correctly, this is one of those posts that never gets answered by the boys down south in Oz). I know that Protel / Altium is aware of the problem in both P99 and PDXP, and I am pretty sure that they are trying to find a work-around or some other kind of fix for this in PDXP. Respecting a "fix" for PDXP, I would suggest that they somehow "tag" or otherwise "identify" all of the internal "fill" type "segments" of a plane on the first pass thru DRC, and then only if the plane changes (is "repoured") do they have to "recheck" or "reanalyze" the whole of the "segments" of the internal plane. This would mean that they only have to DRC the outline of the plane against any other traces, which should be much faster (they may be doing this already). Another possible fix for PDXP would be to have a DRC mode that would go in and somehow "tag" or otherwise "identify" everything in the board that has already passed DRC, so that it would not be rechecked. Possibly the inverse of this would be more practical, in which any "new" additions or changes since the last DRC check would be somehow "tagged" or "identified", and then a DRC could be run on just those items alone, so as to not recheck the entire board, which appears to be what is happening now. Yes, I still want my Service Pack 7 for Protel 99 SE, but even if they gave it to me, I don't think that there would be any improvement in this area. Respecting PDXP, I think that there should be at least some minor fixes or improvements in this area in the real SP3, if it ever gets here. Protel / Altium have taken enough time with working on the Pre-Release of SP3 and Pre-Release SP3.5 to completely rewrite the whole program from the ground up, so it will be interesting to see whether or not this works any better. It seems that whenever I or someone else really "bad mouths" some issue in PDXP, that it gives the people in Oz a little extra "incentive" to fix the problem. Maybe this will have some effect on future releases. Anyway, by the time you have read this, you will probably have completed the board, so this won't be a problem anymore, at least until the next time. JaMi ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Creer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Protel EDA Forum'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 4:09 PM Subject: [PEDA] Analysing... > Hi all, > I've just been handed a rather large board with quite a few > individual GND polygons on it (35 to be exact). I've been asked to clean it > up so we can have a prototype made. Every time I make a change to the board, > (ie, move track, delete fill etc..etc..), after the edit, it sits there for > about 6 seconds with " Analysing GND" in the status bar at the bottom, and > then all is well until the next edit. > I've turned off all online DRC checks, and anything else I could > think of, to no avail. I'm pulling my hair out trying to get this done (and > there's a lot to do...). > > Any ideas? > > Thanks! > > TC > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
