ECAD Schematic and Board Attributes In Creo View

[jlambertz]

When viewing ecad schematic and board documents of the same design, in Creo View 2.0, the PCB attributes shows a long list that do not match between the schematic and the board.    Some of the attritude are attributed used only inside the board or schematic and not by Creo View and have different names.   I suggest some kind of a method to control if they are displayed in the viewer.   There should be a way to rename so that when user see Part Number (our convention) and not Name.   See other issues in my case ticket 11221177.

[jlambertz]

This to me is an opportunity for people not trained in ECAD to not be confused.  Not so much the long list which is important too.   As I orginally pointed out the naming between the two parts of the design, schematic and board.   This was orginally commented on in Creo View 2.  I have not confirmed it this might have been addressed in Creo View 3.

Similar point is the colors have a mechanism to set them.   Perhaps that same type of mechanism might be used for these attributes.  If one uses a multi-Ecad environment this might also be a concern.

[MarkA.Caradonna]

Hi Jim,

I have been looking into this idea.   We currently have work planned for Creo View 3.0 M030 where the Attributes pane will have a new column called Category which will have values of System Property or Imported Property.   This would allow you to see what we read direclty from the CAD tool (Imported Property) versus ones that we normalize with our readers (System Properties).  

If we look at your example, lets pick RefDes property seen in DxDesigner.

Today we normalize this into the Name property in Creo View so it would show up as a System Property.   I also think that the Name property which exists in Dx would show up in Creo View as an Imported Property with no value.   I would also expect an additional property to show up in Creo View for REFDES that is marked as an Imported Property.

Do you think these changes will address your concern?

Thanks,

Mark

[jlambertz]

Mark,

I have a couple suggestions.

This was done with our workflows from DXD and PADS 9.5.  Our workflows with attributes started out over 10 years ago before Mentor purchase.  We are currently in the process of cleaning up with a change to Cadence HDL.  I suggest that PADS/DXD have sample PCB designs that you might use these as design files to generate the files for Creo View (3.0 and not 2.0).   This would get you a more current list of examples.   Then use that to mock up in a spreadsheet.   You could do that for more than one ECAD tool.   Easier to explain to programers and get feedback from users, too.

The column heading label "Category" ?    Why not just label "Design" and "System".   I suggest something different because that word is used in classification.   I believe also the system could have passed some of these classification attributes into the Design.

The list is alphabetical.   Okay RefDes, Value, and Part_Number are the most used on schematic.   On the board Same with placement info and decal info.  Could the list be arranged by settings?

The list is rather long.   To the point of turning off by settings?

For trouble shooting I definately like the idea of seeing what is coming from where.   I'm sure everyone would have their own preferences. 

[MarkA.Caradonna]

Hi Jim,

Few comments.   Our developers had this to say about the Mentor EDIF from Dx:

From below discussion it is evident that REFDES (REFDES, Ref Designator, etc) and Part Number properties are missing in Creo View for Mentor Dxdesginer designs. The reason behind it is these properties are *not* exported in the EDIF exported from Mentor using either the new edifexporter or the older mgswrite utility. Looks like we should get this to Mentor’s attention, though I try to remember we would have already done so.

I urge you and other customers to write Mentor tech support to get these type of writer issues addressed.  

The column heading is already used in Creo View MCAD so we will remain consistent within Creo view by using the Category label.

You can sort the attributes on any column in Creo View by clicking the column name.

Turning off properties is an interesting but potentially dangerous practice.   This is something we considered in the past but we haven't built anything into Creo View to do.

Thanks,

Mark