Three CADSTAR questions

1.

Sometimes CADSTAR design editor crashes. This lockes my design file. When I restart the design editor I can only open my design in read only mode. I must save it with a new name to be able to save it.

How can I unlock my design file after a crash?

2.

When I add rectangles during footprint design is there a way to enter the start and stop coordinates using the keyboard (as in ORCAD)? Now I add the rectangle and then edit the shape properies to get the rectangle to the right position (but I would like a faster method).

3.

I have observed that some component libraries place the silkscreen in the "Top silk" layer and some in the "Top Silkscreen" layer. Do they both end upp on the "real" silkscreen? I havn't done any PCB CAD so this is still a mystery to me.

Hi Swen_s
I can answer a couple of your questions,
1. When cadstar crashes and you have a design open cadstar creates a lock file for this design. To enable editing of these designs you need to delete the lock file, you will find lock file in the same folder as your master design. ( FYI the locked file has a squiggle in front of file name ).
3. When you create a footprint (component) you can apply 'component name' to footprint, it depends on what layer you set these to as to what layer it appears on in your design.

hope this helps you

swen_s said:

1.Sometimes CADSTAR design editor crashes. This lockes my design file. When I restart the design editor I can only open my design in read only mode. I must save it with a new name to be able to save it.

How can I unlock my design file after a crash?

Click to expand...

First if you do not need to use file locking turn it off.

Menu Tools\Options\System tab. deselect file locking (also select to compress designon save or they arebig files).

To remove the lock file in windows explorer turn on the ability to see hidden files, look for the file with a tilde in front of it.
I.E. ~filename and delete it - its only about 1kb.

swen_s said:

2.
When I add rectangles during footprint design is there a way to enter the start and stop coordinates using the keyboard (as in ORCAD)? Now I add the rectangle and then edit the shape properies to get the rectangle to the right position (but I would like a faster method).

Click to expand...

Set the grid to the size you want your rectangle, draw the size of shape you want (does not need to be where you want it) then change the grid to allow you to place the Settings\Interactive origin to a corner the shape needs to go to and select and use F2 to move the shape there (turn snap tools on (Settings\snap) - this can help)

Not quite the same as Orcad but very easy to do.
You can also use the slide out shape properties window to edit the X/Y position of a shape once you have drawn then selected it.

swen_s said:

3.
I have observed that some component libraries place the silkscreen in the "Top silk" layer and some in the "Top Silkscreen" layer. Do they both end up on the "real" silkscreen? I havn't done any PCB CAD so this is still a mystery to me.

Click to expand...

This is a case of mixed libraries where people have named their layers differently.
If you import both sets into the same library or design then you will end up with both layers in your library/design and it soon becomes a mess. It is better to change the layer names to match in each library before adding them to a single design/library.

In my earlier years I took over a library and tried doing something with 2 libraries into one, it ended up a real mess and caused all sorts of problems.
I.E. when Gerbering the silkscreen if both layers were not turned on I missed name/details for some components.

Thanks! :smile: