Bob Blick wrote:
> I see reference designators rotated a lot in Altium and Eagle. And I
> have also seen ground symbols pointing in the "wrong" direction, too.

There are sloppy and lazy people out there, or ones that just don't give a
crap.  Unfortunately there are a lot of them.  That doesn't make it a good
idea, though.

> Are those tools really so cruel to the user that things like reference
> designators and ground don't automatically right themselves?
>
> If so, how hard do they make it to grab something and spin it?

Exactly.  In Eagle you "smash" a part, which detaches the text strings so
that they can be moved separately from the part.  Then you rotate or move a=
s
needed.

> It's been a while since I used either of those products, so I am
> actually curious what steps you need to take to do those operations.

While you can smash and adjust text in Eagle, I actually do this quite
rarely in the schematic.  I have pre-defined versions of parts that could
have different orientations, like resistor, capacitors, and diodes.  My
convention is the part name in the library ends in -V for vertical and -H
for horizontal.  There is also -L, -R, -U, -D for things like diodes that
have 4-way orientation.  It takes a little extra time to make the part up
front once, but makes it really easy when drawing the schematic.


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