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copy-layout-placement.rst

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Copying layout and placement

Motivation

Often times, your design includes similar-but-not-identical sections such as voltage regulators. Wouldn’t it be nice if you’d only had to do layout and placement once and then copy it to the other instances? Ever wanted to reuse layout and placement from another project? Horzion EDA lets you do just that in a simple two-step process.

TL;DR, I just want to copy a circuit form another project

In the source schematic

  • Assign a group to the circuit you want to copy with the "Set new group tool"
  • Assign unique tags to all to-be-copied components with the "Set tags from Ref. Desig." tool
  • Copy the circuit the clipboard

In the destination schematic

  • Paste the copied circuit

In the source board

  • Copy all items of the circuit, i.e. packages, tracks, vias, planes, etc. to the clipboard

In the destination board

  • Place the package that's the reference for the pasted layout
  • Place all other packages of the circuit, their placement doesn't matter
  • Select all packages of the pasted circuit
  • Invoke the "Paste placement" tool and click on the reference package
  • All other packages of the pasted circuit should now be placed as they were on the source board
  • Select any package in the pasted circuit and invoke the "Paste relative tool"
  • All items copied from the source board should now be in the right place relative to the reference package

Groups & Tags

For this feature to work, you’ll first need to tell Horizon EDA how the components fit together. This is accomplished by assigning groups and tags to components. Each section, i.e. all components associated with one voltage regulator, get assigned one group. To do so, select all symbols of one section and use the tool “Set new group” to assign all of them to a new group. For making groups and tags visible on the schematic, use the “Toggle group & tag visibility”. A components group and tag will then show up below the reference designator.

To tell Horizon EDA the matching components in each group, these get assigned identical tags. Since a newly-placed component will already be assigned a unique tag and groups and tags get preserved on copy/paste other instances of the same circuit will likely have the appropriate tags already set. To change the tag on a component, use the “Set tag” tool. To automatically assign a unique tag to every component, use the "Set tags from Ref. Desig." tool.

When you’re done, the schematic should roughly look like this (with the boxes added for clarification). All components inside a yellow box belong to the same group, all inside a red box belong to the same tag.

images/groups-tags.png

You may use the “Highlight group/tag” action to make sure that you got the assignments right.

Board

Place and route any group as usual.

Paste placement

For each group, place the package you’d like the other packages to be referenced to at the target position and place all other packages anywhere. Then, select all packages in the routed group and invoke the "Copy" action. This can also be in another project as long as the groups and tags match.

Next, select all packages of the group that you’d like to apply the placement to and start the “Paste placement” tool. Click on the reference package (any pad or centroid) in the already placed group and all selected packages will be placed accordingly.

Paste relative

Select everything (packages will be ignored) you want to copy in the routed group and copy it to the clipboard. Then invoke the "Paste relative" tool on any package in the destination group. Keep in mind that the package placement in the destination group should already match the layout of the source group to get useful results. As with the paste placement tool, this also works across projects.