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I've got a design (PIC microcontroller that uses transistors to turn on banks of LEDs). I have 2 instances of the LED array, so I made a hierarchical design - I have a separate schematic for the LED array, and I put 2 instances of it into my main project.

The LED arrays are just a bunch of resistor/LED pairs, labeled R1/D1, R2/D2, etc.

The problem comes when I generate a netlist - the netlist appears to include everything, but it doesn't differentiate between the R1 from the first instance of the array and the R1 of the second instance. So I get things like this in my netlist file:

*SIGNAL*  _HN_1_!ON
Q1.3 D1.1 D14.1 D2.1 D15.1 D3.1 D16.1 D4.1 D17.1 D5.1 D18.1 D6.1 D19.1 D7.1 D20.1 D8.1 D21.1 D9.1 D22.1 D10.1 D23.1 D11.1 D24.1 D12.1 D25.1 D13.1
*SIGNAL*  _HN_2_!ON
Q2.3 D1.1 D14.1 D2.1 D15.1 D3.1 D16.1 D4.1 D17.1 D5.1 D18.1 D6.1 D19.1 D7.1 D20.1 D8.1 D21.1 D9.1 D22.1 D10.1 D23.1 D11.1 D24.1 D12.1 D25.1 D13.1

Q1 feeds the first LED array, Q2 feeds the second LED array, but you see that D1 is referenced in both. If I feed that into FreePCB, I'm only going to get one LED array and it's going to be wired ALL wrong.

Is there a way to make TinyCAD do the right thing here?

Update: I tried putting the LED arrays on separate sheets, but that didn't help.

Update again: I suppose I could just copy the LED array design onto separate sheets and then number their reference designators appropriately, but that's giving up the hierarchical design altogether.

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I've looked into it and this seems to be an open bug issue that just hasn't been fixed yet: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2859909&group_id=47763&atid=450703

If you can use a different type of netlist output that might help but I'm guessing it's not an option for you. Your best bet at this point is to just abandon hierarchical designs until it gets fixed. Sorry.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks. That's kind of what I thought from my experiments. Fortunately, the design is simple enough that it's not THAT big a deal to simply copy the LED array designs onto separate sheets and renumber. I had just been hoping that I was missing something. \$\endgroup\$ Feb 4, 2011 at 16:13

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