Is there a way to preserve grouping of parts on the schematic when back annotating after renumbering (resequencing) the reference designators in PADS? A simple example would be two IC, each with their own bypass capacitor. At the schematic level, U1 is bypassed by C1 and U2 with C2. Both C's and U's are tied to the same power and ground. The PCB board is renumbered (resequenced) and the capacitor bypassing U1 is now C2 and U2 is bypassed by C1. When I back annotate to the schematic, no changes are made since all the properties of C1 and C2 match and the nets are correct. The schematic still shows C1 bypassing U1 and C2 bypassing U2. What the schematic displays is not the actual placement at the PCB. Now imagine 100 IC's and a few hundred bypass caps. This makes a tangled mess that takes hours to correct. We have tried using the CLUSTER property in the past and had no success. Any ideas?
If the association really matters, then that is usually managed at placement time ?.
If the caps are all in parallel, then association is only cosmetic, and many designs
simply use a separate page for decoupling caps (avoids any implied association)
I have (rarely) seen a special decoupling prefix, where CD1 decouples IC1 and CD9 decouples IC9 etc,
which is another way to manage association, and is also removes the Power caps, from others. C1..Cn