Using Macro's to improve productivity

[mhowell]

Using a 1.00mm BGA & many english parts, with a 24mil fanout Via, I find a need to change grid settings from 5 mils to 0.5mm frequently because there is barely enough space between vias for a 5 mil trace .

I was looking for a macro or shortcut in layout that makes this grid setting change with the press of some shortcut key combination. (i.e. CTRL-ALT-F1), and found MacroExpress (http://www.macroexpress.com)


I have included macro executables to do the following:
1. grid change setting (either 1mil, 5mils, or 0.5mm) by by typing CTRL+F1, F2 or F3,
2. launching Orcad and resizing the window with CTRL+O,
3. disabling an enabled net by picking it and executing CTRL+F5

I am sure others have great macro ideas for using Macroexpress, and I would like to share macro's with you.

[ElectroLund]

Hey, I caught your message in the OrCAD community forums and replied there too.

Recently, our firm became completely disillusioned with OrCAD 7.2's hierarchical schematic features. So we moved a 41 page schematic to a flat design. Lots and lots of repetitive work.

We did no settle on MacroExpress but a program called Mouse & Key Recorder (http://www.kratronic.com/tools/recorder/). It's very nice. I've found that the more I use and think in terms of repetition, the more tasks I do in OrCAD lend themselves to automation.

I have quite a collection of macros that have helped me immensely and cut a lot of the design time down. For instance:

1) copying buses of signals and updated their prefix/suffix index numbers
2) copying index pages in the Project Manager and updating the pages index number
3) changing off-page connector directions
4) toggling schematic/part editor select mode
5) adding buses of junction connections

Looks like the file formats are completely different between Kra-tronic and MacroExpress. That's too bad.