Orcad – Issue While Designing Schematics in Orcad

orcad

I have a problem, I have to do my schematic on cadence. It is a complex board with an Ethernet part, an Alimentation Part, a display part, a microcontroller part etc…

So I want to do my schematic on different pages (one for each part).
I also want a pages where I can see the interpages connections because I thing the schematic will be clearer with that.

I did it with hierarchical block. The problems with hierarchical blocks is that it is working with schematic folder not pages. The result is the component number is not incremented automatically:

let's say I have 2 Capacitors in folder SCHEMATIC1 and 2 in folder SCHEMATIC2 then my capacitor value are: C1 and C2 in my SCHEMATIC1 and C1 and C2 in my SCHEMATIC2.

What I want is :
let's say I have 2 Capacitors in folder SCHEMATIC1 and 2 in folder SCHEMATIC2 then my capacitor value are: C1 and C2 in my SCHEMATIC1 and C3 and C4 in my SCHEMATIC2.

I have a lot of components, so I don't want to manually change the designator. I want OrCAD to do it alone.

How is this possible?

I hope it is clearer.

Best Answer

OrCAD does have a feature for automatically assigning designators in a hierarchical design.

Suppose, your design has following schematics (folders):

  • Schematic1 has components C1 and R1
  • Schematic2 also has components designated C1 and R1
  • Schematic3 is a Top Block Diagram. It's set as a root. It's highest in the hierarchy. Hierarchical blocks for Schematic1 and Schematic2 are drawn on Schematic3. If some schematic is not drawn in the root*, then it's not in the hierarchy and OrCAD will not treat it as a part of the design.

* Or in one of the root's children. It's recursive. You get the idea.

Here are the steps for automatically assigning incremental designators:

  1. Bring up the design window
  2. In the design tree, click on the design itself. (It's the node, which contains all of the schematics.)
  3. Menu: Tools -> Annotate...
  4. Select Reset all part references to "?"
  5. Click OK.
  6. Open Schematic1 and Schematic2. Notice that designators became C? and R?. Go back to the design tree.
  7. Again, menu: Tools -> Annotate...
  8. Select Incremental Reference Update
  9. Click OK.
  10. You should have incremental designators throughout the design.
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