Free Altium Layout with DDR3, PCIE, SATA, HDMI, LVDS, ... | LinkedIn:
Freescale Design Guide for iMX6
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
How to Convert PDF to Excel - Free Solution
Helpful for creating multi-part Schematic symbols.
From: New Tech - Latest Technology In The World:
How to Convert PDF to Excel Without any Desktop Programs
PDF to Excel Online - Free
'via Blog this'
From: New Tech - Latest Technology In The World:
How to Convert PDF to Excel Without any Desktop Programs
PDF to Excel Online - Free
'via Blog this'
Friday, November 8, 2013
Drill Table - Bugs
As shown below you can get different results for the Drill Table in Altium depending on which method you choose to display your drill tables
Shown below are Drill tables for the same design with different results.
The new drill table shows a 124 holes.
New Drill Table ( Menu > Place > Drill Table)
While the legacy (.legend) Drill tables has 118 holes for the same design. I believe when Altium created the new drill table the legacy table was inadvertently broken.
If you have legacy (.legend) drill tables in your older designs and you re-spin the board you need to delete the legacy (.legend) table and replace it with the new Drill Table.
If you leave the legacy (.legend) drill table in your design, the drill table may not be in agreement with the NC Drill file.
I had a couple projects on hold recently because the fab drawing was not in agreement with the drill files. I explained to my fabricator that I was using Altium, that they should follow the NC Drill file and ignore the Altium Drill table.
Also it is common to have dimmed rows in the the legacy table on the fab drawing as shown below if symbols are used to display the drills. The fix is to use characters.
The legacy Drill Table (.legend)
Symbols
As shown below changing the same legacy drill table above to use characters fixed the dimmed rows.
Also if you have a lot of drills in the legacy table symbols may be repeated for different size holes, which is why another reason why characters should be used instead of symbols.
The legacy Drill Table (.legend)
Letters
I filed a bug (#3422) which has zero votes at Altium Live. So I'm not expecting to see a fix for the legacy drill table.
When I re-spin a board I need to remember to delete the .legend table and place the new drill table.
Another problem has surfaced, when using the PCB Release Manager to Generate Outputs.
Output generation failed with .legend (legacy drill tables).
Shown below are Drill tables for the same design with different results.
The new drill table shows a 124 holes.
New Drill Table ( Menu > Place > Drill Table)
While the legacy (.legend) Drill tables has 118 holes for the same design. I believe when Altium created the new drill table the legacy table was inadvertently broken.
If you have legacy (.legend) drill tables in your older designs and you re-spin the board you need to delete the legacy (.legend) table and replace it with the new Drill Table.
If you leave the legacy (.legend) drill table in your design, the drill table may not be in agreement with the NC Drill file.
I had a couple projects on hold recently because the fab drawing was not in agreement with the drill files. I explained to my fabricator that I was using Altium, that they should follow the NC Drill file and ignore the Altium Drill table.
Also it is common to have dimmed rows in the the legacy table on the fab drawing as shown below if symbols are used to display the drills. The fix is to use characters.
The legacy Drill Table (.legend)
Symbols
As shown below changing the same legacy drill table above to use characters fixed the dimmed rows.
Also if you have a lot of drills in the legacy table symbols may be repeated for different size holes, which is why another reason why characters should be used instead of symbols.
The legacy Drill Table (.legend)
Letters
I filed a bug (#3422) which has zero votes at Altium Live. So I'm not expecting to see a fix for the legacy drill table.
When I re-spin a board I need to remember to delete the .legend table and place the new drill table.
PCB Release Failed
Another problem has surfaced, when using the PCB Release Manager to Generate Outputs.
Output generation failed with .legend (legacy drill tables).
Solution !!!
Always replace the .legend (legacy Drill Tables) with the new Drill Table.
PCB > Place > Drill Table
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Fix Connections - Script
The 'Fix Connections' script is a modified version of 'Fix Overlaps' which was created by Petar Perisin and can be found at Altium Addons.
As demonstrated in DDR3 Routing Simplified - Part 2 to get accurate length data we need cleanly connected routes in our designs.
I recently reviewed a reference design and noted that 500+ bad connections were found in the design.
Click on images to view
Let's clarify what the difference is for good and bad connections.
This design passed all DRC checks for opens and shorts, so in terms of connectivity there are no bad connections in the design.
However several of the length matched routes had bad connections in the design.
These less than perfect connections resulted in wrong lengths being reported in the PCB panel for Total Net Lengths and the From -To Lengths.
Enter stage left, this where the 'Fix Connections' script shines.
As shown above 'All Nets' were checked for bad connections, however I wanted to verify the matched length routes in the DDR3 part of the design.
Using the drop down menu in the script I selected the 'DDR' Net Class which included all nets in the DDR3 circuitry and then selected Ok to run the script.
Note in this design there are also other DDR Net Classes that can be selected to focus on a specific data lane or the address and control lines.
By selecting a Net Classes and running the script I was able to easily find and fix the routes in the DDR Net Class.
Because the script remembers the last selected Net Class, I was able to quickly check and fix nets in selected Net Class.
Tip:
To further speed up the process the script was assigned to a custom menu and a hot key.
With a hot key set run the 'Fix Connections' script you can quickly find and clean up routes.
Download Script Link:
I will describe in this post how I used the 'Fix Connections' script on a recent DDR3 design.
I recently reviewed a reference design and noted that 500+ bad connections were found in the design.
Click on images to view
Let's clarify what the difference is for good and bad connections.
This design passed all DRC checks for opens and shorts, so in terms of connectivity there are no bad connections in the design.
However several of the length matched routes had bad connections in the design.
These less than perfect connections resulted in wrong lengths being reported in the PCB panel for Total Net Lengths and the From -To Lengths.
Enter stage left, this where the 'Fix Connections' script shines.
As shown above 'All Nets' were checked for bad connections, however I wanted to verify the matched length routes in the DDR3 part of the design.
Using the drop down menu in the script I selected the 'DDR' Net Class which included all nets in the DDR3 circuitry and then selected Ok to run the script.
Note in this design there are also other DDR Net Classes that can be selected to focus on a specific data lane or the address and control lines.
By selecting a Net Classes and running the script I was able to easily find and fix the routes in the DDR Net Class.
Because the script remembers the last selected Net Class, I was able to quickly check and fix nets in selected Net Class.
To further speed up the process the script was assigned to a custom menu and a hot key.
Conclusion
With a hot key set run the 'Fix Connections' script you can quickly find and clean up routes.
A big thank you to Petar Perisin, his efforts made this script possible.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Live Drill Table
Altium introduced the Live Drill Table in AD13.
The live drill table is scale-able which is nice, but I really don't see the value of the feature which updates the drill table every time I drop another via in the board.
My main rant is that my fab drawings looked better when I used the old .legacy table.
For example here is screen shot of the .legacy
Click on images for better viewing
Below is what the same board looks like after placing the new live drill table.
Nasty big graphic symbols, so crowded together that you can't tell what is what.
Also in the live drill table the option to use letters vice symbols appears to have been deprecated.
Sorry about the ranting today. AD14 was just released and with every new release I get a little angry. This because I'm getting tired of new features being introduced when in my opinion the Altium design software team should be focused on fixing bugs, adding better error handling to minimize the crashes and error reports.
As pointed out by Petr the Drill symbols can be scaled in the Outjob configuration.
The live drill table is scale-able which is nice, but I really don't see the value of the feature which updates the drill table every time I drop another via in the board.
My main rant is that my fab drawings looked better when I used the old .legacy table.
For example here is screen shot of the .legacy
Click on images for better viewing
Below is what the same board looks like after placing the new live drill table.
Nasty big graphic symbols, so crowded together that you can't tell what is what.
Also in the live drill table the option to use letters vice symbols appears to have been deprecated.
Sorry about the ranting today. AD14 was just released and with every new release I get a little angry. This because I'm getting tired of new features being introduced when in my opinion the Altium design software team should be focused on fixing bugs, adding better error handling to minimize the crashes and error reports.
As pointed out by Petr the Drill symbols can be scaled in the Outjob configuration.
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