Conquering re-usable sub-circuits.

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diffequ
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Conquering re-usable sub-circuits.

Post by diffequ »

Greetings everyone.

How can I make a sub-circuit or a custom circuit design part of a library?

In some EDA SPICE based packages, if a user has designed a circuit and wants to make this circuit a permanent library component, the only thing to do is to great a macro, allowing the user to use as many instances of this macro in a design like any other library component.

Creating a sub-circuit (parent/child) was a big accomplishment for this user. Making a sub-circuit into permanent library component appears to be more difficult.

Has anyone conquered this situation?

Thank you all for reading the above.

Sincerely,

diffequ
Iain
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Re: Conquering re-usable sub-circuits.

Post by Iain »

What you are talking about I think is a feature called 'design snippets' and is not currently fully supported in the software - although it is on our wishlist.

Re-using a subcircuit within a schematic is not a problem - simply give the subcircuits the same name. Additionally, duplicating the circuitry in ARES is supported via the 'Replicate' function as follows :

1) Create the subcircuits with a base annotation (Design - Edit Sheet Properties - Annotator Init). You might therefore have your first subcircuit annotated from 100 upwards (R100, R101, etc.) and the second identical subcircuit annotated from 200 upwards (R200, R201, etc.).

2) After placing and tracking the circuitry for the first subcircuit in ARES place a tagbox around the block and invoke the replicate command. This is essentially a controlled block copy except that it also allows you to increment the annotation. In our example therefore the Increment field on the replicate command would be set to 100, transforming R100->R200, R101->R201 and so on. This will both duplicate the circuitry and also link the connectivity for the second 'block'.

Re-using such blocks across different projects is a feature that we are considering, although it will not be available in the short term.

Iain.
BeauWebber
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Re: Conquering re-usable sub-circuits.

Post by BeauWebber »

Hmm,
Thanks for this, it is exactly what I need right now.
I can get the ISIS sub-circuit part to work, ending up with 2 circuits : 1st with U100, U101 ... , 2nd with U200, U201 ....; etc.

However when I go to Ares and select all the layout for one sub-circuit (it all highlights), go to "Edit" => "Replicate" I get the box and enter the increment (have tried 100, 99, 200) leave X, Y offsets at 0 ( have tried other values, but not sure what the units are); no of copies 1 (have tried 2); hit OK - nothing happens. I do not get any other copies, and the component list remains unchanged.

I am using version 7.9 SP1 Level 0, so I have removed the ground plane before doing this.

Help appreciated, was getting on well before hitting this problem.
cheers,
Dr. Beau Webber
BeauWebber
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Re: Conquering re-usable sub-circuits.

Post by BeauWebber »

OK,
I found an answer to my problem of Edit => Replicate apparently doing nothing :

In the help files on "Make Package" there is an example which uses Replicate, which has units (mm) in the offset.

I have successfully run Replicate now, inserting a sufficiently large Y offset (giving the units) so the copy did not overlap the original.
Works fine !
cheers,
Beau
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