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Changing Reference Designators on SCH without Disturbing Existing PCB Layout?

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TimNJ:
Greetings,

Supposing I have a PCB that’s already laid out and essentially final, and I want to go back and change only the reference designators of a number of parts, what’s the best way to do this?

I want all of the components on the PCB to stay exactly where they are, and only the silkscreen reference designators to change.

In my 5+ years of using Altium, you would think I would’ve ran into this situation before. But, when I try simply swapping ref des (e.g. R1 -> R2; R2 -> R1) or changing a ref des to a brand new name (e.g. R1 -> R99), then update PCB from schematic, the PCB gets totally messed up. PCB becomes a rat’s nest of connections. For a pair of ref des swapped on the schematic, I would need to exchange the XY positions of R1 and R2 on the PCB to fix it. For a new ref des, the old component (R1) is deleted from the board and a new component (R99) is placed outside the board outline.

I just want the ref designator silkscreen text to change. What do I do?

As far as I can tell, the Unique IDs are all locked, so I thought this would be enough. But apparently I am wrong.

Using AD14.

Thanks,
Tim

Psi:
Before changing anything, confirm that

A) When you go to the SCH and update the PCB from Schematic it says there's nothing to change / no changes
B) When you go to the PCB and check project component links everything is linked with nothing unmatched.


Sometimes in older versions of altium I have noticed it can get confused if you do A-B and B-A together and then try to update PCB.
So, instead, you introduce a temp name, eg do A-C  the update, then B-A and update, then C-B and update.

TimNJ:

--- Quote from: Psi on November 18, 2023, 02:15:37 pm ---Before changing anything, confirm that

A) When you go to the SCH and update the PCB from Schematic it says there's nothing to change / no changes
B) When you go to the PCB and check project component links everything is linked with nothing unmatched.


Sometimes in older versions of altium I have noticed it can get confused if you do A-B and B-A together and then try to update PCB.
So, instead, you introduce a temp name, eg do A-C  the update, then B-A and update, then C-B and update.

--- End quote ---

Thank you. I’ll have to check component links from the PCB side.

I’ve also tried A->C and then C->B, but if C is a new ref des to the project, it removes A from the PCB and plops down C as a new component, outside the board outline.

I ultimately want to rename all ref designators, which I tried to do via annotations. Cleared all and had it automatically annotate the schematic. Then pushed to the PCB, but same issue as I originally noted. It’s almost like the Unique ID is also being swapped from A->B and vice versa? Then I Ctrl-Z’d on the schematic and PCB to revert to original designators, then tried to re-sync SCH to PCB to confirm alignment. This was a royal mistake apparently. Could not get them to sync even though visually all of the ref des on schematic and PCB were indeed matched. Had to recover from local version history.

But anyway, usually the problem exists between keyboard and the chair…so if there’s fatal error I’m making, I’d be curious to know.

PlainName:
Had similar with Circuit Studio: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/circuit-studio/re-annotate/

TimNJ:

--- Quote from: PlainName on November 18, 2023, 05:47:08 pm ---Had similar with Circuit Studio: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/circuit-studio/re-annotate/

--- End quote ---

Thank you. A lot of good ideas there to try/consider.

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