[sdiy] Altrium Designer/Protel

[Dave Manley]

Charles Bisaillon wrote:
> In the end, we have nothing to complain about except that a trace is missing
> in the VCF. We are still unsure whether this was connected or not in the
> schematic although everything seemed fine.
Many tools allow you can to generate a netlist, or a cross reference 
that shows all nets connected to each pin on each device.  Examining 
these can be an easy way to find problems.  It is also easy to write 
some perl to parse these to look for things like nets with only one 
connection.  Better tools can do a design rule check (DRC) if the 
libraries have been built correctly.  This allows you to find nets with 
no or multiple drivers.

Watch out if your schematic capture package allows you to turn off the 
snap grid.  I have had a board come back with a missing net.  Examining 
the schematic you could see a 1 pixel gap in the middle of a wire.  
Someone had gone off grid and thought they'd made a connection - when 
zoomed out it looked like they did.

-Dave