Application Notes

Title: Updating Value Fields in a Schematic Design

Date: November 9, 1999
Keywords: ECO, Replace Component, Value
Summary: This application note describes a procedure that can be used to restore
the value data of a modified Schematic design using Microsoft Office and
ACCEL Schematic to create an ECO file.

When migrating data from a DOS Schematic platform to ACCEL Schematic, component
data needs to be replaced with integrated component data in order to take advantage
of the advanced capabilities of ACCEL EDA. When using the component replacement
function, the value data within the component is updated to the value field contained in
the new library component. Restoring this data can be very time consuming, however,
using Microsoft Office in conjunction with ACCEL Schematic, the process can be
automated through the creation of an ECO file that can be imported into ACCEL
Schematic.

To obtain the format for the ECO file, turn on the ECO recorder. Modify one of the
component values to be correct. Now turn off the ECO recorder. Select Utils/Export
ECO’s and view the pending file. This will be the format needed for the ECO file. To
update the values, the format will be:

CompAttrAdd "C160" "Value" "100uf".

Procedure to create the ECO file:

1. From the migrated Schematic design before any component replacements have
occurred, generate a Bill of Materials report. Choose a Comma Separated File
format (CSV). For the selection, choose Reference Designator and Value only.
Sort the data by RefDes. Generate this same report from the newly revised
Schematic design with the integrated component data.

2. Load the CSV files into Microsoft Excel and then combine them. Sort the entire
spreadsheet of data by the value field generated from the revised Schematic
design. Components containing values will now be at the top of the spreadsheet.
The components with missing values will be at the bottom. The components
missing the value data are the ones that will need to be updated. Delete the rows of
the spreadsheet containing “value” entries from the revised Schematic design so
you are left with only the entries that need to be changed. Also delete the header
row.

3. Delete the columns in the spreadsheet for the revised Schematic design. The
spreadsheet should now contain only the components that need to have the value in

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Application Notes

the new design updated to what it used to be in the old design. We now have two
pieces of our ECO format. The reference designator and the new value.
4. Now add a column to the spreadsheet before the reference designator column.
Type CompAttrAdd into each row of this column for our spreadsheet. (Use the auto
fill feature in Excel to add this data quickly) Add another column in between the
reference designator column and the value column. Type Value into each row of
this column. Add one more column after the value column. Type Quote into each
row of this column. Now save the file as a CSV file in Microsoft Excel.

5. Open the CSV file in Microsoft Word. Through a series of replacements, the file
can be reformatted to match the ECO format above. Perform the following
replacements:

Replace ‘Value’with ‘“Value” ‘ (Be sure to add a space before and after the
quotation marks)
Replace ‘CompAttrAdd’with ‘CompAttrAdd ‘ (Be sure to add a space after the
word)
Replace , with “ (Replace the commas with a quotation mark)
Replace ‘Quote’with nothing (This will remove Quote from the file altogether)

6. The file should now be in the proper ECO format to update the value information.
Save the file as a text file in Word named Values.ECO. You will need to put the
filename in quotes in order to preserve the ECO extension on the file.

7. Import the ECO file into the revised Schematic design using the Utils/Import ECO
command. This should restore the value data in the design to match the original
data.

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