Passive pins of component become Bidirectional when part added to schematic

[leef_me]

I am trying to do an ERC and I find several errors, unexpected because I thought connector pins would be "passive".

Error: Connecting 'Power to Bidirectional'; 

Error: Connecting 'Bidirectional to Power';

Try this example:

On a new schematic, place an LM7805CT and a HDR1X3

Wire 1 to 1 the three pins of the 7805 to the pins of the HDR

Tools> electrical rules check

You'll get at least one error, if you leave the ERC rules table unchanged:

    Error: Connecting 'Power to Bidirectional';   [U1 pin OUT, Circuit2]  to  [J1 pin P3, Circuit2]

Funny thing is that it seems when I edit HDR1X3, component 7700 in the Master Database

The pin parameters tab shows the part as Component type Analog with all three pins labeled "passive".

[leef_me]

I don't know what happened to stop my entry and cause multiple posts of the same information.

What things I wanted to know are:

Am I looking at the HDR1X3 part wrong, do I see the pins as passive when they are actually BIDIR... If so, why ?

How do I change the parts that have seemingly wrong pin types?

I think that changing the parts pin type "ERC include/exclude " seems a bit drastic.

I can't edit the properties of the part and change its pin type to passive, why not ??

Thanks in advance

[lacy]

I replied to one of your other posts about the ERC but i may not have totally answered all your questions as you outlined in this post.

1.) It would probably be easier to just edit the ERC table if the error doesn't pose a simulation problem. (refer to the other posts I made in your other thread)

2.) If you really want to edit the part to re-label the pin to what you believe to be correct then you must first save the part to your user database and then edit it there. Place it on the schematic and then right click on it to bring uop the menu and select "Save to Database" or you could do this through the Database Manager. Once it is editted then it will be in the user database and you will have to delete the current one on the schematic and use the one from the user database. The Master Database can not be overwritten and all edits will save to the user database (thank god for that as I would have ruined mine a long time ago).

I hope I have covered everything. If not let me know and I will try and answer any questions you have. 

[leef_me]

Thanks for your reply, it helped a little.  I copied the HDR1x3 to user library and it failed ERC like the one from Master DB.

I opened the part with the editor in the user library and then said OK, and overwrite; delected the part prreviously placed, and placed  the edited version, it passed ERC.

So the act of editing (to view) showed me a part with the attributes I expected, and somehow it defaulted to a good state (for me).

This seems very strange to me.

So there seems to be 4 methods to get around the error:

1) copy the part and do what you want with it,

         and the act of viewing the part with the editor may CHANGE the pin type of the part so a newbie might not see that a change was made from the original; so the newbie says "OK" and overwrite, not realizing a real change happened.

2) tell ERC to ignore the pin (which possibly means other errors involving that pin could be ignored too)

3) tell ERC (through the table )that PWR connected to Bi-directional isn't really such a bad thing (which is a bad thing to do)

4) see it, review it, ignore it.

[lacy]

You pretty much have got it. The things you outline are about the only thing you can do.

In your case, since it seems to me that you prefer using the ERC, then number 4 would probably be your best option. That way you can be satified that you did an ERC and reviewed the potential errors.

It is up to you how you decide to do anything in Multisim. If you like the ERC then by all means use it. I personally don't like it as it is based solely on what you decide to label a pin and I am not going to edit every component that I get an ERC error with. The only thing I do use it for is unconnected pins on a large design. For me that is the only useful thing about it.