gEDA-user: Design Flow Roadmap starting point

[joeft]

Igor2 wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Mar 2007, al davis wrote:
>
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>>>*  Finally, how should PCB behave with a hierarchical
>>>schematic?
>>>      
>>>
>>Right click on a symbol, select "go inside", and another drawing 
>>opens up showing what's inside.  gschem also should act this 
>>way.
>>    
>>
>
>I like this idea very much. In case of PCB it also would make sense to
>add a way to display in place what's inside. With an "expand
>all" functionality this would allow one to see the whole pcb with all
>inner structures at once, without needing to export to ps.
>  
>
The ability to "look inside" or "expand all" is a feature that is 
standard for IC layout editors.  Years ago I used a PC board editor that 
evolved from an IC layout tool and it had this behavior.  In particular, 
you could create sub-blocks of circuitry that might represent individual 
"devices" (or elements in PCB parlance) or more complex blocks that you 
might want to repeat.  You could add these to your layout (with up to 
256 levels of nesting).  You could turn on/off the visibility or 
"editability" of any device at a lower or higher level of nesting than 
the one you were currently working in.  When "editing down" to a lower 
level device it would leave all the surrounding features (the "context") 
visible so you see what you were doing.  Other copies of the current 
block could be immediately displayed with the changes you just made.  
Needless to say, this implementation of heirarchy allowed for some very 
complex designs and much easier re-use than we have now.

Joe T

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