This way you will catch drawing errors you might not spot otherwise. TIP: There is an option to automatically insert the junction symbols ( the little black dot that show where an electrical junction is made ). Any electrical connection that has the same net name will be connected.
Any electrical pin that touches the wire will be connected. These are invisible but guaranteed to be unique. You can assign a net name to a wire ply placing a net identifier (P N) or a power object (P O) Any wire not having a net name will be assigned one by the netlister. Place Wire (PW) allows you to interconnect individual pins. Keep an eye on it.Ĩ Schematic Capture Once parts have been placed its time to wire them together. The status bar gives you information about the commands and their shortcuts at your disposal during almost every step you are taking. The zoom function will execute and you will find yourself in that area with the part of choice still attached. Example Place Part, move cursor and do Zoom Window : draw the zoom area. Upon completion you return to the previous command and continue where you left off there. You can stack up to 3 commands like this. This means you can invoke a command while already in the process of executing a different one. Place Part = P P Place Wire = P W Place Net = P N Zoom Window And so on. The rule here is: think what you want to do and type the 2 letters of that action. Most of these are easy to pick up and you will find them very valuable.
However, There are additional hotkeys that follow the Protel way and do not conform to the standard windows way. Underlined letters on menus can be activate by holding down the ALT key and pressing that letter.
Right click on them and you can change between icons, lists, details etc.ĥ : Basic commands Commands and Menu s Protel uses the standard windows approach of menus. TIP: The project manager and most popup boxes have a windows like view option. And finally waveform files are created by the simulator. These are created from with in the PCB module. PCB printers are definitions to create layer views. Spread sheets are excel 95 format files and can be edited using the built in spreadsheet program. These are created form inside the PCB layout tool. CAM files are the definitions to create manufacturing output for your project. Document types: Schematic and PCB are pretty obvious.
While you can import things like PDF files, Protel might not be able to open them. Note : Keep in mind that Protel can only show the documents it recognizes. Importing documents or folders: Right click and select either import, import folder or import project. A wizard will pop up and show you the possible files you can create.
A local copy of the drivers will be placed Protel s install directory.Ĥ : Adding files Adding files to your design To add a document: simply right click on the white are of the project and select New. Especially if the new drivers have replaced some functions with new ones using a different format. Some programs install New versions of the ODBC drivers. Protel uses this engine to store and retrieve documents in the DDB file.
ODBC problems and How to Fix Them ODBC is the database engine used by MS Access. When opening a design it will be converted to the windows file system. Note: Protel DXP no longer supports the MS Access database. Windows File system Stores all related documents in one directory. You can now set the location, name and design type. 3 : Starting a project Starting a project Creating a new design is straightforward.