Sequentially numbered multi-channel design

[penfold]

Hi,

I'm working on my first multiple channel design in altium and quite like the facilities for multi channel and hierarchical design but I can't say i'm particularly fond of the reference designator format it comes up with when using etc,

What I'm wondering if there is a way of avoiding the $Component_$RoomName style and just sequentially number all components, I'm not getting on with just how clunky the designators end up on the PCB given theres only a modest number of components per channel.

[gxti]

You can change how it formats the "physical designator" in project options, but there's no option that I know of to make it totally sequential e.g. U1 for the first channel, U3 for the second, U5 for the third etc.. The shortest format is to just use the logical designator as-is, in other words you'd have U1 in N different places on the PCB.

[penfold]

I might possibly have found a way of doing it...

If I re-annotate the design in the PCB view, I can then back annotate to the schematic.  I've not had a real chance to play with this method and whether or not the next time I recompile the schematic it all goes back to the original or not but i thought I'd just put it out there

[ludzinc]

I might possibly have found a way of doing it...

If I re-annotate the design in the PCB view, I can then back annotate to the schematic.  I've not had a real chance to play with this method and whether or not the next time I recompile the schematic it all goes back to the original or not but i thought I'd just put it out there

FYI

I'd done this in the past, thought I'll just knock up a quick example, and bugger me, I could not get it to work.

*Thankfully* I had half an idea as to what the problem was and a ton of googling later, I finally got my simple example to work!

Details here:  http://ludzinc.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/altium-multichannel.html

Enjoy!

[gxti]

Nice! I never noticed that option before. On a semi-related note, I also never noticed "Number Schematic Sheets" before, which is another bit of manual tedium that maybe I won't forget next time.

[snoopy]

There's also another annoying issue with the multichannel designs in Altium. The underlying assumption is that all channels are orientated in the same direction. You can't rotate some of the rooms because when you do a global copy of the room format it will reset the component and track positions back to the orientation you are copying from. I'm not sure how to get around it.

cheers

[DerekG]

There's also another annoying issue with the multichannel designs in Altium.

Welcome to the world of Altium.

[ludzinc]

There's also another annoying issue with the multichannel designs in Altium. The underlying assumption is that all channels are orientated in the same direction. You can't rotate some of the rooms because when you do a global copy of the room format it will reset the component and track positions back to the orientation you are copying from. I'm not sure how to get around it.

cheers

You can't directly.

What you can do is lay out one room, and select which room you want to apply the copy to.

You and then lay out another room and copy that rooms format to other rooms.

That's the work around for different shaped rooms.

If it's just a rotation issue you can apply the changes to all rooms, and then rotate those affected.

Annoying?  IMHO it's way more useful than not having room copies being available.  However, I'd bet a dollar that this is a feature that's dropped from the free version, and I could agree with that.

[snoopy]

There's also another annoying issue with the multichannel designs in Altium. The underlying assumption is that all channels are orientated in the same direction. You can't rotate some of the rooms because when you do a global copy of the room format it will reset the component and track positions back to the orientation you are copying from. I'm not sure how to get around it.

cheers

You can't directly.

What you can do is lay out one room, and select which room you want to apply the copy to.

You and then lay out another room and copy that rooms format to other rooms.

That's the work around for different shaped rooms.

If it's just a rotation issue you can apply the changes to all rooms, and then rotate those affected.

Annoying?  IMHO it's way more useful than not having room copies being available.  However, I'd bet a dollar that this is a feature that's dropped from the free version, and I could agree with that.

Yes I am leaving the room rotation till last until I get the master room right. Still, hopefully it's something Altium can look into because the multi-channel feature is a very powerful and time saving feature  and is one of the reasons from migrating from Protel 99.

cheers