Issue link: https://resources.pcb.cadence.com/i/1533022
Whatever group you're creating, tracking them all down and giving them a highlight color allows us to use the filter to narrow down the field for adding additional design rules. The constraint manager shows all of the nets by default but you can click a box in the filter window and only the highlighted (or selected) nets remain for editing. Also notice an option to display "Failed Only" that will surface the connections in need of improvement while hiding every- thing else. What's the highest number of pages you've seen in a schematic? The filter is a good way to stay focused on design verification of a complex printed circuit board. In spite of our best efforts, signal integrity and power integrity issues are still a risk. When something happens outside the scope of what the constraint manager covers, we're asked what we can do to prevent a repeat of the situation. At this point, we need to review the available properties. A shape can be given any one of over sixty properties. A component has seventy and a net can be given almost 300 different properties. Whatever is selected in the find filter will generate a different list of these attributes. Many of them are simply to get around a DRC that can't be otherwise avoided. Some of the properties overlap with the constraint manager. I can select a pin at large and add a rule about whether the copper will flood over the pin, create thermal spokes or ignore it by creating a void as if it was not part of the net on that layer. Perhaps, an analog ground pin is connected to the primary ground on one layer only while the rest of the ground layers are voided. We get all kinds of wild ideas to document as best we can. Properties assigned directly like that may override what's in the constraint manager. Meanwhile, a signal integrity person might make exclusive use of the constraint manager. They would wonder why the tool is misbehaving. That happened. Then someone wrote a script that rooted out the "hidden" properties. You can find them in your database. Here are the steps. 1. Click the Show Element icon from the toolbar; looks like an eyeball 2. Within the Find pane, go down to the Find By Name section and left mouse click the left pulldown section to reveal the options: Figure 3. Rooting out obsolete properties helps ensure a clean design verification. 5 www.cadence.com Controlling Trace Width Using OrCAD X and Allegro X Tools