Orcad Capture - repeating design with spreadsheet.... can it be done?

[Stupid Bear]

I am working on a board that has a repeating circuit involving several relays, diodes and resistors. This is repeated about 60 times. Each has a net that turns on the relays and nets that correspond to the circuit pins for NO and NC on the relays. Is there a way to have the 60 instances of the circuit block driven by a spreadsheet, such that I would only have to specify which nets go to each block instead of having to actually create all 60 blocks on my schematic page(s).

[nctnico]

You can export / import schematics as XML. So if you export an XML with 1 block and use some scripting to expand that schematic to have the number of instances you need, it might be doable. I don't know if this is effective time wise, but scripting sure does help to prevent mistakes so it is worthwhile to persue to avoid needing to spend time on a board respin / debugging. Python is likely a good choice as there are libraries available to deal with XML files in an easy way. I have used the XML export / import function in Orcad Capture to do mass font size modifications (search & replace) to make a schematic more readable.