Here's what we are trying to do (using EE7.9.1 DxD flow)
We have 3 similar PCB designs that mostly share the same circuitry. We would like to establish a common starting point for all three, meaning the same layout, netlist, reference designators, etc.
Once this "baseline" is established, the boards will be differentiated by a handful of "non-common" components. Variants for the three designs will be different as well.
As the project develops, there will be identical modifications needed to all three schematics. We have had difficulty in the past maintaining identical circuit changes when the projects were managed individually by the global design teams, with one PCB per project. We hope this method will make it easier to have all three designs synchronized with the latest changes as we move forward.
I have been unsuccessful in all my attempts. The schematic connectivity, netnames and netclasses are all retained between the copies of the source schematic, but most of the reference designators are lost on the copies, no matter what the settings are in Setup>Settings (unique names on copy, copy constraints on sheet, etc.).
The symbol instance names are consistent from source schematic to destination schematic (those system-defined tags that begin with "$1I" and are followed by a series of unique numbers), but reference designators are not assigned to the destination schematics. We need to have these symbol instance names be associated with the same reference designator for all three designs.
With over 200 symbols in the source schematic we were hoping to avoid manually renaming or assigning these reference designators (200 x 2 schematic copies = 400 manual edits). Too risky!
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Mike
