Updating SCH/ PCB from Lib to SVNDBLIB?

[mengfei]

since last year we have been building a database of parts wherein each part with a specific value & vendor would have their own PN, yeah yeah i know where mighty late to the party.

previously we would just use an schlib or pcblib to slap on parts on the Schematic & manually add the values & other parameters & just select a specific footprint for that part then transfer to PCB then everybody's happy at the end of the day.

NOW! This! changing to SVNDBLIB, just drop in the part you want with specific PN, Vendor, Footprint & other data's imbedded in that part. Good? No?
Problem now is how do we update our existing schematic's & PCB's from the old ways to match the ones we have in our database Lib?

& please don't tell me it has to be done manually    

[ajb]

I have done this between dblibs, but I don't think I've done it from file-based libs, so that may be different. Also, this was a while ago, so I'm not sure how accurately I remember the process.

The process will likely still involve a good bit of manual work--or at least manual verification--since if your parameters are all input manually you will not be able to do a simple automated one-for-one replace.  If you have part numbers reliably assigned to components that you can align to components in the new library that would help a lot.

But basically, you want to open up the project the project schematic, open the "SCH List" panel, and at the top set the filter to 'Edit all objects from all project documents include only Parts' (or instead of 'all project documents' select 'current document' if you want to do it one sheet at a time.  There's a 'Library' column, which should display the library the component is currently linked to, and then a 'Design Item ID' column that identifies the component within the library.  You may want to manually add a new component to the sheet from the dblib so you have an example of what the Design Item ID should look like, as it depends on the dblib configuration.  You'll need to edit these fields to point to the new library and the new Design Item ID for each component.  This will still be a tedious process, but the table format of the SCH List window should make it a lot less tedious than manually clicking on every component.  You can copy and paste between the SCH List and a spreadsheet if that helps. 

That said, it may actually be better to do this one part at a time in the schematic, so that you can verify that the new part matches all of the manually entered parameters of the part its replacing in the context of the circuit.  You can still use the SCH List to quickly identify parts that have or haven't been updated yet. 

[mengfei]

thanks for your input & insight.

Yea I guess we still need to keep our old Libraries for our old projects & just use the SVNDBLIB for new projects unless an engineer want's to use it & edit everything manually, i tried a simple project & I gave up lol    

[tszaboo]

The right answer is, you don't. Unless there is a very good reason to change hardware, you don't change it.