Joerg said:
While I got your attention here, IIRC you are a Kicad user. How did you
get around the fact that it messes up power connections during
annotation? For example when using a LM324 with power pins only on U?A.
Depending on position on the sheet it then places U4C there and orphans
the power wires as well as pins. U4A lands somewhere sans power connection.
You're mistaken about Kicad. I think I browsed it but my main CAD usage over
the years has been Orcad ( just for schematics - I usually have a seperate
layout guy ). With its demise I'm thinking Logic and Pads. I did some layout
re-work on PADS and found it very intuitive to use. The only other package I've
had moderate use of it a British oddity called Vutrax, plus I've used the
freebie from ExpressPCB which wasn't bad actually. For what I wanted its almost
manual approach was suitable. The only thing that annoyed me was that you
couldn't highlight an entire trace.
The issue of power pins is an oddball. Orcad simply put them on U ( or IC as I
term them ) A and the other packages don't show the power connections.
I don't know what CAD system they use but Soundcraft have a way by which no
individual part has power pins but generates a rectangle for all the parts
therin with the power pins. This is neat since you can keep power and
decoupling to one corner of the sheet.
Random allocation of the power pins must be a real nuisance.
Graham