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On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 10:34:20AM -0200, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> Peter Todd wrote:
> 
> > Here's a real world example... Say you want to be able to take a vector
> > graphics file representing line art that needs to be turned into an
> > LEDs, as is done in cross-walk signs, and automatically generate a
> > schematic and pcb layout. It's basically a simpler version of what I
> > want to do. Copy and paste doesn't do it for that sort of task.
> 
> I think there are some packages that can import AutoCAD files. I'm not sure
> whether that goes so far as to recognize entities/blocks/whatever as parts,
> though -- which is what you would need if you want to go that route.
> 
> Other than that, for example Protel has some kind of macro language that
> you can use for that -- either directly, or to just pick up parts locations
> from some other file and add those parts. 

Thanks, I took a look at Altium's scripting and it's support for
hiarchical schematics and rooms in the pcb layout. There's some nice
ideas there, for instance how easy it is to setup matrixes of parts with
repeated schematic sheets. You can also copy sections of pcb layout,
rooms, from one room to another if the schematics behind them are the
same.


That said, the scripting seems more geared to providing ways to do
specific tasks, say, creating a planar transformer out of tracks, then
it is to the sort of automated building tasks I'm thinking of. For one,
you can't access the auto-router at all, at least if the API docs I
found are correct. You can access and change the high-level options for
the router, but you can't define a room, put your auto-generated parts
in it, and command the auto-router to route.


Last semester in school I had a sociology class. One of our assignments
was to collect a whole pile of data on political cartoons, and create
various graphs and charts and write a nice paper. Frankly, I hate the
liberal studies courses I have to take, so spent about %95 of my time
learning how to use the Python Pyx library to draw my graphs, and %5
writing. Essentially Pyx is this very generic API based around providing
the names of functions to do different bits of the task of drawing the
graph. You can change basically anything by simply defining a new
function for the task at hand.

Going back to circuits imagine if schematic capture was done that way.
Most schematic sheets would use the usual "user-entered-data" function
to generate the netlist. Symbols could use a different
"make-symbol-from-pins" function. Finally, your led matrix would be done
with "peter-todds-led-matrix" and have some arguments passed as to what
led matrix parameters we want. In all cases signals to/from the
different layers are handled by references along the lines of ../Vcc or
peter-todds-led-matrix/V+

When the time comes to start layout the various layers of code would be
called. Starting at the top the main schematic sheet would start asking
the various sheets under it for info. For instance the component symbol
sheets would return the footprint info. For your standard resistor
that'd be something along the lines of "two holes, two pads, some
silkscreen stuff etc" The next sheet down is amalgamating that into
"resistor, capacitor, etc", big long lists of stuff.

The special led matrix sheet however... It's calling it's own footprint
functions too, however when it returns layout info it'll say something
along the lines of "blah blah blah, but, all those leds? they have to be
here, here, here and here, don't move em! also there's one big routing
keepout from (x,y) to (a,b)"



*Thats* what I was hoping Altium could do. :)

- -- 
http://petertodd.org
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