Locking manual routes in OrCAD

A

Andrew

Guest
Let me start by saying I used to use the autorouter to route entire
boards (SPECCTRA) because the boards were simple and because I didn't
know any better.

Now I've moved on to manual routing, to more neatly route and to route
critical nets the way I want them, and just to learn in general.
Welll, as I was going, I wasn't locking down my routes, I was just
figuring I would end up routing the entire board by hand. So, at this
point, I have a considerable amount of routes that I did manually and I
don't want moved by an autorouter (such as SPECCTRA) if I were to
autoroute a section (which I haven't figured out how to do with
SPECCTRA, but could do with OrCAD's autorouter) or the entire board
which I could do with either autorouter.

So, in short, my question is, how can I quickly either lock down all
the routes I have without individually selecting every last one of
them, or at least somehow indicate to the autorouters that I don't want
my manual traces moved at all?

It would be a huge PITA if I had to select every single route and hit
lock or whatever, so I was hoping I could just use a select any and
highlight the whole board such that every route would be selected and
do it globally like that, but I can't get that to work, so I'm either
missing something, or it isn't possible?

Any hints or tips? How about for the future? When I route manually
and know I will be using an autorouter, should I / do I have to lock
every trace when I finish it? That is annoying too! Sometimes I have
to move the trace when I do a new one and locking and unlocking here
and there could get tedious! Hopefully there is in fact an easy way
out of this!
 
Andrew wrote:
Let me start by saying I used to use the autorouter to route entire
boards (SPECCTRA) because the boards were simple and because I didn't
know any better.

Now I've moved on to manual routing, to more neatly route and to route
critical nets the way I want them, and just to learn in general.
Welll, as I was going, I wasn't locking down my routes, I was just
figuring I would end up routing the entire board by hand. So, at this
point, I have a considerable amount of routes that I did manually and I
don't want moved by an autorouter (such as SPECCTRA) if I were to
autoroute a section (which I haven't figured out how to do with
SPECCTRA, but could do with OrCAD's autorouter) or the entire board
which I could do with either autorouter.

So, in short, my question is, how can I quickly either lock down all
the routes I have without individually selecting every last one of
them, or at least somehow indicate to the autorouters that I don't want
my manual traces moved at all?

It would be a huge PITA if I had to select every single route and hit
lock or whatever, so I was hoping I could just use a select any and
highlight the whole board such that every route would be selected and
do it globally like that, but I can't get that to work, so I'm either
missing something, or it isn't possible?

Any hints or tips? How about for the future? When I route manually
and know I will be using an autorouter, should I / do I have to lock
every trace when I finish it? That is annoying too! Sometimes I have
to move the trace when I do a new one and locking and unlocking here
and there could get tedious! Hopefully there is in fact an easy way
out of this!
Click to expand...
I just went into the design and manually selected every single manual
route I had done (185, which isn't many but I'm thinking for the
future, it could be many many many more, if I hadn't locked down as I
went). I did as many as I could (which in tight places is SUCH a
PITA!!!) by looking and clicking and hitting L, then, when I thought I
had got all of them, I looked at the statistics for number routed and
partials, remembered it, then hit "unroute board" and looked at the
statistics again. I had missed a few, so I kept hitting undo to see
which routes were getting unrouted because they were not locked. This
method was very tedious, but did work. Is this the best method there
is, or can you simply hit a "lock all current routes" button, which
would be so awesome if you could! If not, it definitely should be a
feature in newer versions!!!! BTW I'm using OrCAD 10.0...
 
Andrew wrote:
Andrew wrote:

Let me start by saying I used to use the autorouter to route entire
boards (SPECCTRA) because the boards were simple and because I didn't
know any better.

Now I've moved on to manual routing, to more neatly route and to route
critical nets the way I want them, and just to learn in general.
Welll, as I was going, I wasn't locking down my routes, I was just
figuring I would end up routing the entire board by hand. So, at this
point, I have a considerable amount of routes that I did manually and I
don't want moved by an autorouter (such as SPECCTRA) if I were to
autoroute a section (which I haven't figured out how to do with
SPECCTRA, but could do with OrCAD's autorouter) or the entire board
which I could do with either autorouter.

So, in short, my question is, how can I quickly either lock down all
the routes I have without individually selecting every last one of
them, or at least somehow indicate to the autorouters that I don't want
my manual traces moved at all?

It would be a huge PITA if I had to select every single route and hit
lock or whatever, so I was hoping I could just use a select any and
highlight the whole board such that every route would be selected and
do it globally like that, but I can't get that to work, so I'm either
missing something, or it isn't possible?

Any hints or tips? How about for the future? When I route manually
and know I will be using an autorouter, should I / do I have to lock
every trace when I finish it? That is annoying too! Sometimes I have
to move the trace when I do a new one and locking and unlocking here
and there could get tedious! Hopefully there is in fact an easy way
out of this!


I just went into the design and manually selected every single manual
route I had done (185, which isn't many but I'm thinking for the
future, it could be many many many more, if I hadn't locked down as I
went). I did as many as I could (which in tight places is SUCH a
PITA!!!) by looking and clicking and hitting L, then, when I thought I
had got all of them, I looked at the statistics for number routed and
partials, remembered it, then hit "unroute board" and looked at the
statistics again. I had missed a few, so I kept hitting undo to see
which routes were getting unrouted because they were not locked. This
method was very tedious, but did work. Is this the best method there
is, or can you simply hit a "lock all current routes" button, which
would be so awesome if you could! If not, it definitely should be a
feature in newer versions!!!! BTW I'm using OrCAD 10.0...
Click to expand...
Open the "Nets" spreadsheet.

Select all the nets of interest (drag the left-clicked cursor down the
list, or use ctl-lft-click to select, or whatever)

Right click on the selected nets to get the popup menu, and

Select "lock" from the pop-up menu

[I found that out by reading the help files. This is from Layout 9.0,
but I bet it is the same for 10.x]

--
NOTE: to reply, remove all punctuation from email name field

Ned Forrester n_f_orrester@whoi.edu 508-289-2226
Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Dept.
Oceanographic Systems Lab http://adcp.whoi.edu/
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
 
Ned Forrester wrote:
Andrew wrote:
Andrew wrote:

Let me start by saying I used to use the autorouter to route entire
boards (SPECCTRA) because the boards were simple and because I didn't
know any better.

Now I've moved on to manual routing, to more neatly route and to route
critical nets the way I want them, and just to learn in general.
Welll, as I was going, I wasn't locking down my routes, I was just
figuring I would end up routing the entire board by hand. So, at this
point, I have a considerable amount of routes that I did manually and I
don't want moved by an autorouter (such as SPECCTRA) if I were to
autoroute a section (which I haven't figured out how to do with
SPECCTRA, but could do with OrCAD's autorouter) or the entire board
which I could do with either autorouter.

So, in short, my question is, how can I quickly either lock down all
the routes I have without individually selecting every last one of
them, or at least somehow indicate to the autorouters that I don't want
my manual traces moved at all?

It would be a huge PITA if I had to select every single route and hit
lock or whatever, so I was hoping I could just use a select any and
highlight the whole board such that every route would be selected and
do it globally like that, but I can't get that to work, so I'm either
missing something, or it isn't possible?

Any hints or tips? How about for the future? When I route manually
and know I will be using an autorouter, should I / do I have to lock
every trace when I finish it? That is annoying too! Sometimes I have
to move the trace when I do a new one and locking and unlocking here
and there could get tedious! Hopefully there is in fact an easy way
out of this!


I just went into the design and manually selected every single manual
route I had done (185, which isn't many but I'm thinking for the
future, it could be many many many more, if I hadn't locked down as I
went). I did as many as I could (which in tight places is SUCH a
PITA!!!) by looking and clicking and hitting L, then, when I thought I
had got all of them, I looked at the statistics for number routed and
partials, remembered it, then hit "unroute board" and looked at the
statistics again. I had missed a few, so I kept hitting undo to see
which routes were getting unrouted because they were not locked. This
method was very tedious, but did work. Is this the best method there
is, or can you simply hit a "lock all current routes" button, which
would be so awesome if you could! If not, it definitely should be a
feature in newer versions!!!! BTW I'm using OrCAD 10.0...


Open the "Nets" spreadsheet.

Select all the nets of interest (drag the left-clicked cursor down the
list, or use ctl-lft-click to select, or whatever)

Right click on the selected nets to get the popup menu, and

Select "lock" from the pop-up menu

[I found that out by reading the help files. This is from Layout 9.0,
but I bet it is the same for 10.x]

--
NOTE: to reply, remove all punctuation from email name field

Ned Forrester n_f_orrester@whoi.edu 508-289-2226
Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Dept.
Oceanographic Systems Lab http://adcp.whoi.edu/
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
Click to expand...
Hmm, thank you for the suggestion. Any idea if this will have any
adverse effects if a particular net is partially routed, or not routed
at all, and selected as "locked." I just want to make sure it doesn't
prevent any further routing of the entire net until it is "unlocked."
I will try playing around, but in the mean time, does anyone know of a
reason NOT to do it this way?

Thanks again.
 
Andrew wrote:
Ned Forrester wrote:
Andrew wrote:
Andrew wrote:

Let me start by saying I used to use the autorouter to route entire
boards (SPECCTRA) because the boards were simple and because I didn't
know any better.

Now I've moved on to manual routing, to more neatly route and to route
critical nets the way I want them, and just to learn in general.
Welll, as I was going, I wasn't locking down my routes, I was just
figuring I would end up routing the entire board by hand. So, at this
point, I have a considerable amount of routes that I did manually and I
don't want moved by an autorouter (such as SPECCTRA) if I were to
autoroute a section (which I haven't figured out how to do with
SPECCTRA, but could do with OrCAD's autorouter) or the entire board
which I could do with either autorouter.

So, in short, my question is, how can I quickly either lock down all
the routes I have without individually selecting every last one of
them, or at least somehow indicate to the autorouters that I don't want
my manual traces moved at all?

It would be a huge PITA if I had to select every single route and hit
lock or whatever, so I was hoping I could just use a select any and
highlight the whole board such that every route would be selected and
do it globally like that, but I can't get that to work, so I'm either
missing something, or it isn't possible?

Any hints or tips? How about for the future? When I route manually
and know I will be using an autorouter, should I / do I have to lock
every trace when I finish it? That is annoying too! Sometimes I have
to move the trace when I do a new one and locking and unlocking here
and there could get tedious! Hopefully there is in fact an easy way
out of this!


I just went into the design and manually selected every single manual
route I had done (185, which isn't many but I'm thinking for the
future, it could be many many many more, if I hadn't locked down as I
went). I did as many as I could (which in tight places is SUCH a
PITA!!!) by looking and clicking and hitting L, then, when I thought I
had got all of them, I looked at the statistics for number routed and
partials, remembered it, then hit "unroute board" and looked at the
statistics again. I had missed a few, so I kept hitting undo to see
which routes were getting unrouted because they were not locked. This
method was very tedious, but did work. Is this the best method there
is, or can you simply hit a "lock all current routes" button, which
would be so awesome if you could! If not, it definitely should be a
feature in newer versions!!!! BTW I'm using OrCAD 10.0...


Open the "Nets" spreadsheet.

Select all the nets of interest (drag the left-clicked cursor down the
list, or use ctl-lft-click to select, or whatever)

Right click on the selected nets to get the popup menu, and

Select "lock" from the pop-up menu

[I found that out by reading the help files. This is from Layout 9.0,
but I bet it is the same for 10.x]

--
NOTE: to reply, remove all punctuation from email name field

Ned Forrester n_f_orrester@whoi.edu 508-289-2226
Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Dept.
Oceanographic Systems Lab http://adcp.whoi.edu/
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA

Hmm, thank you for the suggestion. Any idea if this will have any
adverse effects if a particular net is partially routed, or not routed
at all, and selected as "locked." I just want to make sure it doesn't
prevent any further routing of the entire net until it is "unlocked."
I will try playing around, but in the mean time, does anyone know of a
reason NOT to do it this way?

Thanks again.
Click to expand...
I tried the selecting nets and locking and that seems to work great.
It appears to lock the traces that are there and still allow additional
routing of the nets.

One problem I ran into (that I think is unrelated, but it could be
related) is that now when I autoroute then try to "unroute board," it
won't. It unroutes a bunch of connections but leaves a bunch too. I
can't seem to get it to unroute ALL the autorouted nets, and leave my
locked ones alone. Any pointers?
 
On 7 Sep 2006 05:23:24 -0700, "Andrew" <xxragexx@gmail.com> wrote:

Let me start by saying I used to use the autorouter to route entire
boards (SPECCTRA) because the boards were simple and because I didn't
know any better.

Now I've moved on to manual routing, to more neatly route and to route
critical nets the way I want them, and just to learn in general.
Welll, as I was going, I wasn't locking down my routes, I was just
figuring I would end up routing the entire board by hand. So, at this
point, I have a considerable amount of routes that I did manually and I
don't want moved by an autorouter (such as SPECCTRA) if I were to
autoroute a section (which I haven't figured out how to do with
SPECCTRA, but could do with OrCAD's autorouter) or the entire board
which I could do with either autorouter.

So, in short, my question is, how can I quickly either lock down all
the routes I have without individually selecting every last one of
them, or at least somehow indicate to the autorouters that I don't want
my manual traces moved at all?

It would be a huge PITA if I had to select every single route and hit
lock or whatever, so I was hoping I could just use a select any and
highlight the whole board such that every route would be selected and
do it globally like that, but I can't get that to work, so I'm either
missing something, or it isn't possible?

Any hints or tips? How about for the future? When I route manually
and know I will be using an autorouter, should I / do I have to lock
every trace when I finish it? That is annoying too! Sometimes I have
to move the trace when I do a new one and locking and unlocking here
and there could get tedious! Hopefully there is in fact an easy way
out of this!
Click to expand...
Not a cure-all, but you can autoroute windowed areas of the board.
I've done that where the manually routed areas are distinct from the
autorouted areas.

---
Mark
 
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