Pin types for DRC

I believe your power and ground symbols are incorrect, Mentor technote MG54969 states the below.

The value for the Pin Type property on power and ground pins should be IN on components. On power and ground symbols the Pin Type should be OUT.

So I would change your pin on the +3.3V and pin on the GND symbol to OUT.

Mentor technote MG54969 note is for DxDesigner 2005.3 and older, so it is fairly dated

For the +3.3V symbol we use the pintype to Power. 

For the GND symbol we use the pintype to Ground

On resistors, we set our pintypes to Analog. 

For more info why we went this route, look at https://support.mentor.com/en/product/852852130/knowledge-base/MG40390?pid=sc%3Asearch&pid_context=pintype%20resistors

We do the same for LEDs, but In/Out makes sense, but you will get the errors on the check

The DRC checks are frustrating, but they do find a lot of legitimate issues that make it worth running.  If you could only approve errors/warnings like you can in Expedition it would make it a better tool

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your post. This is the best and I dare say only good explanation about setting pin properties I found on the Mentor site that actually explains why it is done. Thank you!

What about the power/ground symbols that have pin properties defined as outputs? How well do they work when the power/ground pins are defined as power/ground?

I am working on coming up with pin properties for our library so we can use the DxDesigner DRCs and it has been a challenge learning how the different DRCs work so we know what types to start with. What DRCs are helpful to you. Any information you can give me would be appreciated.

Thanks and Best regards

Jeff

jleine

We have had a lot of discussion on DxDesigner's DRC check in the forums, so I will give you some links to those and some Ideas people have posted.  I played around with DRC, but it still has way too many false positives.  Even with that said, I do find it useful and have found some critical errors with it.  I can share my VerifyDefaults.ini with you, but I haven't done much with it in over a year

Discussion Links

• DxDesigner Verify/DRC Scripts
• strange drc-511 error
• Electrical Design Rule Check drc-204: How to handle ceramic caps?
• DxD Tools/Verify drc-002 rule "values" format
• DRC-601 through DRC-606

Idea Links

• Create a new property that is equivalent to the property "Power Supply Net", but for ground nets
• Add Option to ignore Bidirectional pins from DRC-116
• Allow the use of Automation to create custom Verify rules
• Enhance DRC-117 and -118 to recognize resistor arrays and networks - D8548
• Flag individual Verify/DRC warnings/errors for ignore - D7357
• Enhance DRC-106 and DRC-117 to ignore differential pairs
• Enhance Verify to account for IODesigner Schematic Update Flow - D12518
• Enhancements to support DRC-117 for GPIO pins
• Create an editor for verify_defaults.ini
• Enhance DRC-108 to optionally ignore dangling nets - D8525
• Enhance DRC-105 to ignore input pins connected only to analog pins - D8524

Hi Jeff,

If you would share it I would appreciate it. Given the lack of good documentation we have been doing a lot of experimenting and it might help us figure out what is going on.

Thanks,

Jeff

Jeffrey Leine | Sr. Electronics Engineer

Phone: 800-237-2041

Ext: 11479

Email: jleine@crestron.com

Crestron Electronics, Inc.

22 Link Drive, Rockleigh, NJ, 07647

<http://www.crestron.com>

On its way

Hi Jeff(s),

I checked with our support and documentation teams. They pointed me to our 'master' Knowledge Base (KB) article on DX Designer DRCs which includes links to videos for each DRC. If you're on support, check out mg572963. The check you're looking for might be in the first link under Connectivity Group. See specifically mg588979 and scroll down.

Good luck!

-Cathy

Thanks Cathy!  It has been a couple of years since I have looked at these, but from what I remember there was a lot tests that didn't have anything (Especially in the DRC-6XX range).  I will take a look again to see if any of that was updated.  The Verify tool has the potential to be a great tool if Mentor would just make a few tweaks to it.  I fear that now that Mentor has the Valydate tool we will not see any more effort put into it

Thanks Cathy.

We are looking through the updates. I also get the feeling that the DRC is being neglected now that the Valydate tool is around. The last support meeting we had the vendor wanted to sell it to us after not being able to answer our questions about the DRC tool that we have now.

DRC is not being neglected in preference to Valydate, the DRC checks cover different use cases, though obviously there is overlap. With the acquisition of Valydate we are reviewing the current built-in DRC checks to ensure where there is overlap the two tools provide consistent results. We are also planning to overhaul the built-in DRC checks and user interface to tackle the issues highlighted above, but as with all of the requirements targeted for Designer it is a matter of resourcing and scheduling these things.

In VX.2.3 we updated the DRC documentation where we believed it was inadequate and we continue to fix regressions as and when we are made aware of them.

What DRC badly needs is an index with a simple description of each DRC, what it does and how it is used such as enter values in the menu, or the verify.ini file or whatever. There is a nice example in the manual, but it is only there for few of them. At some point DRCs were created and someone must of had a specification and an idea how they would be used and that is what I would like to see. Placing videos online buried under links is clumsy to deal with. Sometimes I find myself down 2 levels of links to a dead end.

My suspicion about DRC being neglected for Valydate stems from my conference call to our rep. They could not answer our DRC questions, but asked if we want to purchase Valydate.

I would not mark this post as assumed answered. People have pointed to some misc. web pages with some information, but this is not an acceptable answer in my mind.