replace footprint

[Harold Hebert at NRC]

I have draw electronic circuit with Multisim (10.0.343) and transfer it to Ultiboard.
In Ultiboard I placed all the parts and did almost all the trace when I figure out that there was a part with wrong footprint.
I went back to Multisim and made the modifications and did a "Forward annotate to Ultiboard" -> bad things happens.
Many unconnected pins and ratsnest lines dissappears and, unfortunately, the wrong footprint still there.
Lucky I had a backup.
I have tried to change directly the wrong footprint in Ultiboard but cant find a replacement function.
Need urgent help.

[lacy]

Unforunately, I was not able to re-create this behavior. What I do when swapping footoprints is to go to the spreadsheet in Multisim under the Components Tab and right scroll to the Fottprint column click on the current footprint label and then choose select from database. I select the new footprint and then forward annote to Ultiboard. The part will not be placed, but will appear outside the board at the top with the ratsnest. If you already have run traces this will leave many traces open ended. The only option I see is to delete all the copper an re-run it with the autorouter (hopefully you are using the autorouter)

To change this in Ultiboard is a little more of a hassle. You would have to delete your current component, select one from the database, and then manually assign the nets to it through the netlist editor.

If you could post your circuit for us to examine, then maybe there is something we could see that might be causing your problem.

I hope maybe something in this post will help.

[Harold Hebert at NRC]

Thank you for your help Lacy.

I find out that doing a fordward annotation is quite problematic, I hope that in next version the problems will be resolve.

With Ultiboard the solution is very simple. Just place a new similar footprint on the board, go to the parts sheet and copy the Refdes, Value and Shape info and paste them in the new footprint. Delete the wrong footprint and rename the new one with the same name then the wrong deleted one.

All the Ratsnes lines will attach to the new footprint. Is is a transparent move to all databases.

Harold

[Roberto Muscia]

Hi Harold,

I'm still using Ultiboard 2001 and not ever seen v.10 but did you try to remove the faulty component and:

- check in library if package is correct/ having the right footprint

- go back to Multisim and check if it has the exact package name, if not: modify and create a new netlist.

- return to Ultiboard and import the netlist again.

So basically the same as if Ultiboard doesn't recognize a package when importing a netlist and places a dummy component: deleting the dummy component and using the above mentioned approach would fix the issue.

Cheers,

Roberto

[lacy]

Hi, Harold.

That is a neat trick that never even crossed my mind. Thanks for sharing that. I just wiosh there was a better solution availabe. But since I couldn't recreate it I can't see what your seeing.

Message Edited by lacy on 02-09-2008 06:12 PM