Displaying ECAD ref designator in drawing

[dwahl]

I would like to be able to display ECAD reference designators in a drawing note. I have figured out how to display them in assembly mode and assign new ref designators to components without them, but need to be able to display them in a drawing. Ideally I would like it to be as simple as creating a new note with the ECAD_REF_DES parameter displayed.

Any suggestions?

I can display the ref designator with repeat regions, using the &asm.mbr.comp.name report symbol, but I don't want to have to make a table then use a BOM balloon. I'd like to just skip the table step entirely.


Edited by: dwahl

 

[JFLORES]

Hey Dwahl,


How did did you get the ref des to display in assy mode?


I can get them to show in the drawing with show note, but for what ever reason they do not go to my all notes or annotation layerand I can not see them in the assemly. Using show note they each come in with as separate notes with a leader.


If your looking to reference just a couile of them in one single note, you can get then to show with "&note_??". Where ?? is the ref des.


later Jim

 

[dwahl]

Jim,

There are two ways that I know of to show them in assembly mode...

The first is by going to Tools->Environment and turning on the Reference Designators option. This way they show up as 3D notes attached to each part. For me this is only moderately useful to me, since pretty much any board I'm importing has hundreds or thousands of parts and the notes just clutter it up.

The second way, and the one I find more useful, is turning them on in the model tree. To do this, above the model tree click Settings->Tree Columns, Select "ECAD Params" from the Type drop-down box, and move the ECAD_REF_DES to the displayed column. Then you'll be able to see and edit the ref designators for any part, whether it's from the initial import or something you added. We use this to assign a ref des to parts that wouldn't normally have them (ie screws, nuts, heatsinks, etc) and make our ECO process more uniform. Then to ECO a part you can just use the replace command, and the ref des stays the same, any drawings can simply be regenerated, all with minimal extra work.

Show note worked perfect for what I want to do, I don't know why I didn't try that before. Thanks for the tip,

-David