PADS assembly drawing

[RF10G]

Hello everyone,
I am new to this board. I hope that someone here may be able give me a little help. Hopefully I may return the favor in the future.
My dilema is that I have never created an assembly drawing. Someone else always provided them for me. I now have to create them on my own. How do I create an assembly drawing for the top and bottom utilizing PADS and/or AutoCAD. I am used to seeing a pdf created where all of the particular value components are all different colors and marked in a legend table with all of the partypes and amount of components per color.
How do others accomplish this task with PADS or AutoCAD. What is easiest. Are they any programs I can obtain that will automate this process more efficiently?
Thanks All

[randychase]

You have some options and they will probably depend on what your specific requirements are.

The easiest way to do this is to use the PADS CAM feature to create an assembly drawing output.

Now you have an option.

You can simply use the silkscreen outlines and reference designators, along with the board outline and anything else you might of placed on the TOP ASSY DWG layer.

Or you can use the outlines and separate ref designators on the ASSY DRAWING layer, if you are using a library that was built with that in mind.

If you have Adobe Acrobat, you output this CAM to a PDF and you are good to go, or insert it into a Word Doc. You can also print it to an HPGL plotter file and import that into word, or use the translator (on this forum somwhere) to translate the HPGL to DXF and import the file into AutoCad.

If you have a product like CAM-350, you can output the ASSEMBLY Drawing to Gerber and then translate that to DXF for importation into AutoCad.

Also, you can try using the PRINT SCREEN function to create a BITMAP of the board directly from PADS. Cheap and easy.

One other option.... if you have the optional DXF translator that is sold with PADS, you can use that to output your components and layers as you need into AutoCad. It really is horrible for documentation if you have to export copper pour or traces.

[RF10G]

Thanks! I am still a bit lost as to how to seperate all of the colors for each component type. That is my real issue. I can get info into autocad no problem. How do I turn the components to different colors in order to generate a pdf? In pads I can only highlight in one color. I believe in autocad there is a small amount of color selections as well. Often times I can have several different component types and could use many colors. What is the thought process I should be following?

[Jackie Oh!]

Hi RF10G,

If you export your assy dwg info as dxf straight from Pads, then when you bring the info into AutoCad, the components will come in as blocks. You can explode them several times to do several things. The first time you explode, you can pick the ref des and move them around or chg the colour. The second time you explode you should be able to chg the colour of the polylines that are the component outlines. Play with it a little in Autocad and you'll see that each time you explode the components, you can edit more and more properties.

Hope this helps,
Jackie Oh!

[RF10G]

Thanks Everyone! I believe I have everything covered. I will open the pads file with AutoVue and color all of the parts. All I have to do is select the comp values and the program highlights all of the same comps, then just change the color to a large array of colors. Now I also get a 3 dimensional view of my design.
I appreciate the pointers.
Good luck all.

[Skip Yutkus]

If you search this forum you will find a vb script that may help you out.

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