trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stuff

Drawing Schematics, Hierarchical Design, BOM, Exporting net-lists, etc.
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Digital Larry
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Joined: 02 Apr 2017, 11:37

trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stuff

#1 Post by Digital Larry » 10 Apr 2017, 18:15

1) Sometimes when I am entering a multiple bend connection, clicking to set each corner, when I finally double click or hit enter (not sure which), most of the line disappears and I have to enter it again.

2) The connection likes to do a little whoop-dee-doo when you connect e.g. down to a ground pin or component, instead of drawing straight into the pin.

3) I have a drawing where VDD and GND are connected but I can't figure out where. I disconnected a section of the circuit from VDD, but the net highlight showed it was still connected to VDD! How is this possible?

Tomg
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Re: trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stu

#2 Post by Tomg » 10 Apr 2017, 23:17

Digital Larry wrote:"...Sometimes when I am entering a multiple bend connection, clicking to set each corner, when I finally double click or hit enter (not sure which), most of the line disappears and I have to enter it again... ...The connection likes to do a little whoop-dee-doo when you connect e.g. down to a ground pin or component, instead of drawing straight into the pin..."
This is probably because the Route Mode is set to Automatic. To eliminate the "whoop-dee-doos", set it to Manual by enabling the Place Wire tool (click on the Place Wire icon) and selecting Manual in the Route Mode (M): drop-down list located at the upper-right side of the screen inside the Place Wire box.
Digital Larry wrote:"...I have a drawing where VDD and GND are connected but I can't figure out where. I disconnected a section of the circuit from VDD, but the net highlight showed it was still connected to VDD! How is this possible?..."
This usually happens when there is a Net Port in the mix; the disconnected wires will retain their net connections. I'm not sure why, but maybe this behavior is intentional just in case you decide to move that portion of the circuit to a different page. To disconnect the separated wires from a common net, try this...
1) Right-click on one of the disconnected wires and choose Properties... in the pop-up menu.
2) In the Properties dialog window, disable all options and click on OK. The separated circuits should now have different net names.
3) Rename the different nets as needed.

See this related thread - http://www.diptrace.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11440
Tom

Digital Larry
Posts: 9
Joined: 02 Apr 2017, 11:37

Re: trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stu

#3 Post by Digital Larry » 11 Apr 2017, 03:43

Thanks for the tips. I got the VDD to GND short cleared up.

As far as the wiring, I am still having an issue even with routing mode set to manual. Example shown below.

Click 1 - attach to CAP
Click 2 - make corner
Click 3 - end connection on wire connecting to GND

When I do "click 3", wiring mode completes and segment 1-2 disappears. I have been using DipTrace on and off for several years on different computers and have always had this issue. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I was really surprised it wasn't (apparently) in the FAQs.

I also noticed just now the "Current Segment" setting. If I set this to look like the desired segment then it works OK (corner at lower left). If I set it to the "other setting" (corner at upper right) then I get this problem. I guess I'll read up on what "current segment" is supposed to do... it seems pretty cumbersome to have to set the corner type for each bend in the wire.
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Tomg
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Joined: 20 Jun 2015, 07:39

Re: trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stu

#4 Post by Tomg » 11 Apr 2017, 08:08

I tried to duplicate what you are experiencing without success (different line widths, segment modes, off-grid component placements, different graphics modes, and various combinations thereof, etc.). So far it behaves properly on my system. What DipTrace version are you using? Operating System? VM? If you want, post a schematic file containing a snippet of the schematic area that is exhibiting the problem and I'll see if I can get it to fail here.
Tom

Digital Larry
Posts: 9
Joined: 02 Apr 2017, 11:37

Re: trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stu

#5 Post by Digital Larry » 11 Apr 2017, 12:25

OK I feel silly but I think I understand what I am doing wrong. For some reason (don't ask me why I was doing this - perhaps some old habit), apparently this happens if I click-drag and release to make the final connection point. Only the last segment survives. So now I know I shouldn't click-drag when adding wires. What is not so clear to me is what the software "thinks" I am doing at that point because I'm sure it's trying to help.

Thanks again for all your help.

DL

Tomg
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Posts: 2028
Joined: 20 Jun 2015, 07:39

Re: trouble adding connections to schematic, other weird stu

#6 Post by Tomg » 11 Apr 2017, 13:26

That's an interesting DipTrace quirk I can duplicate here, too. I guess because of an almost infinite number of possible user/program interactions it should be no surprise that one like this got past the scrutiny of the developers. Maybe Alex can add this to their bug list.
Tom

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