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"Mr McDonald,
It worked!!
thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time to help me.
I looked at your Linkedin profile and noticed you have experience with thermal simulations. I'm working on some automotive projects and have the need for…"
It worked!!
thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time to help me.
I looked at your Linkedin profile and noticed you have experience with thermal simulations. I'm working on some automotive projects and have the need for…"
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Glad the hints on IDF imports worked for you. Now that you've had success with this I wanted to send a couple of other thoughts your way that may save you time and frustration
1. If you have several parts/symbols (different heights) that use the same footprint (cell) you can have height issues. If your ecad_hint.map file is not configured correctly, ProE will assign heights to all the parts using the same footprint. You can see if this is happening by looking in the ecad_in.log after your import. If this is happening you'd need to properly configure an ecad_hint.map file. Ours appends the ECAD_ALT_NAME to the MCAD_NAME so we have have distinct names for the symbol/cell combinations. There are file name length limits; I believe its 28 characters. By the way, we do not send IDF exports back to our ECAD layout team. I don't know if we ever will. We are using Wildfire 3 currently. Haven't seen the need to upgrade as we don't work with vendors or custmers using anything higher. Have the other versions loaded however.
2. The other issue you might encounter is in file naming. If the file names for symbols contains various characters that ProE doesn't like, you will have problems getting a complete import. Look for symbols such as + . / and look for spaces contained within the symbol names. I don't know if later versions of ProE work better in this regard, but we must edit our .EMN and .EMP files to correct these. Again, good luck.
IDF exports from our Mentor ECAD tool generates two files with .emn and .emp extensions. Just go to file "Open" in ProE and select "All Types" or scroll down to the .emn file first. You'll select "Assembly" if asked. If you get outline errors select "No" if ProE asks if you want to open sketcher to repair outline. If .emn import succeeds another window will pop up asking for a .EMP selection. Select the .EMP that goes with your .EMN. This should build a 3D assembly of your printed circuit board assembly. There are other things to learn according to whether you want to replace these crude 3d blocks with detailed ProE models, but that is better left until after you get your feet wet. Good luck.
Look at the free trial download of Actify via the link below. I believe that this utility can convert IDF files.
http://www.actify.com/sem/spinfire-professional/?_kk=catia%20cad&am...
Bruce