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Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => Circuit Studio => Topic started by: jmarkwolf on October 14, 2017, 04:11:36 pm

Title: Globally changing footprint references
Post by: jmarkwolf on October 14, 2017, 04:11:36 pm
I personally own Circuit Studio v1.4.1, and am weaning myself away from Altium Designer (retiring shortly).

I'm resurrecting an old Altium design and want to change all resistor through-hole footprint references to 0805, as an example.

Ordinarily I would use "Find Similar Objects" such as in Altium Designer, but I can't find such a feature despite references to it in the Circuit Studio Help documentation.

This is a fairly large design and I'd rather not have to visit each and every part across multiple pages to change the footprint reference.

"Find Similar Objects" is an extremely useful feature, and I desperately hope it is implemented in future releases.

Anyone have a work-around in the mean time?
Title: Re: Globally changing footprint references
Post by: T3sl4co1l on October 14, 2017, 08:01:48 pm
Footprint Manager?

Tim
Title: Re: Globally changing footprint references
Post by: voltsandjolts on October 15, 2017, 10:24:45 am
I guess you don't have a resistor library with full supplier part numbers, since changing footprint would mess that up. I don't mean to preach, you are clearly experienced, but just in case this is useful I'll post it here; Library of common Yageo 805 and 603 caps / resistors which all have Farnell and Digi-Key order codes:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-standard-resistors-capacitors-and-inductors/msg840139/#msg840139 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-standard-resistors-capacitors-and-inductors/msg840139/#msg840139)

It's been downloaded 300 hundred times already but nobody has thanked that post so maybe most folks don't find it useful!
Title: Re: Globally changing footprint references
Post by: jmarkwolf on October 16, 2017, 01:32:13 pm
Original poster here.

Sorry, I didn't want to make my original post too "wordy", consequently I didn't make myself clear.

What I'm really after is to globally select all parts in a project that match certain references, such as containing footprint = "axial0.5", Description =  "Res1", and Comment = "10K" parameters, for instance. Then change specific  parameters to point to some new library part, and all the selected parts will assume the new parameters. This is basically what "Find Similar Parts" does in AD.

It looks as though you need to "manually" go to and select all the parts of interest, then select SCH Inspector, and you can type in the new desired parameters in the SCH Inspector. Kinda clumsy to have to manually select parts across multiple pages, but I can learn to live with it.

Come to think of it, right-clicking on a part behaves differently than SCH Inspector. Perhaps there is still a way. I don't have Circuit Studio in front of me, but will try later.

Even with the occasional disappointment, I'm liking Circuit Studio a lot, especially for the money!
Title: Re: Globally changing footprint references
Post by: jmarkwolf on October 18, 2017, 01:38:34 pm
Original poster here.

I spent some more time attempting to find a work-around to the omission of a "Find Similar Object" feature in Circuit Studio.

Looks like we're stuck manually selecting parts on which we want to edit parameters. Once multiple parts are selected, the schematic Inspector allows easily editing the part parameters globally.

Funny that "Find Similar Object" is listed in the shortcuts and referenced in the Help docs, but not implemented in the software. I hope this means that it is forthcoming in a subsequent release.
Title: Re: Globally changing footprint references
Post by: songshome on October 20, 2017, 04:01:45 pm
You can enable PCB panel with componets active. There you can sort all components by comment or footprint. For example axial0.4.
If you have cross select mode enabled, they will be selected in sch, too.
Than F11 is inspector shortcut in bot pcb and sch. Now you can change footprint for example in both pcb or sch.
It is not Find similar objects feature, but still usefull for basic stuff.