Project Documentation and Reporting
With the ever-increasing complexity of electronic design there is a growing need for project documentation and reporting. In most cases however, the engineer does not want to spend a great deal of time preparing documents to accompany their work and so we think there is a role for CAD software to automate.
The Project Notes module in Proteus is a free form text editing environment that we have coupled with a rich selection of data objects. These objects (layer stackup, drill table, etc) can be placed on a document and will pull their data from the current project. Finally, a set of ready-made templates exists for common reports and you can create your own company branded templates as needed.
- Manufacturing Report with stackup, drill table and assembly plots.
- High speed reports for Length Matching Report and differential pairs.
- Variant report listing differences in components or fitted status.
- Generic text editor with templates and data objects enable custom reporting.
Manufacturing Report
The Manufacturing Report contains customizable information about the PCB that helps your board manufacturer understand what you want. By default it contains the layer stackup diagram along with the drill table as well as assembly drawings and fiducial positions.
This report is commonly produced and supplied along with the PCB Specification document to provide supplementary information to the board house. Both documents can be included automatically with the Gerber files.
PCB Specification Report
The PCB Specification Report is a text document containing sample information on the construction requirements for the PCB. It contains sections for you to specify materials used, allowable tool modifications, testing and quality standards, packaging guidance and much more.
Normally, this would accompany the PCB manufacturing document in the Gerber fileset to provide additional useful information to the board house.
Length Matching Report
The Length Matching Report is a vital tool in high speed designs where track lengths need to be the same or inside tolerance. It groups routes according to their matchgroup and details actual and target route lengths along with internal lengths and tolerances and also a compliance status.
If needed, a separate table can be added to show differential pair information including configuration parameters and compliance status.
Differential Pairs Report
The Differential Pairs Report provides detailed information on the configuration and compliance status of routed differential pairs on the PCB. It includes tolerances for phase matching (skew) and unpaired distances as well as length matching information on the diff pair. A status column compares the specified tolerances against the actual routes and provides a compliance summary.
Testpoints Report
The testpoints report includes both graphical and co-ordinate information about each placed or designated testpoint on the board. A separate data table provides compliance status per net according to the currently set up testpoint strategy.
Assembly Variants Report
When you are working with different assembly variants you often want to check how different they all are from the master base design. This report lists each assembly variant and itemises all of the changes compared to base design. This includes both fitted/not fitted status and also alternate part swap-ins in a variant.
Single Pin Net Report
With large designs it's useful to be able to audit the schematic and ensure that each potential connection has received developer attention. The Single Pin Net Report provides that functionality, listing each available connection that has not been marked as NC. The user should then specifically attach an NC terminal to these pins and re-generate the report. No single pin net entries in the report ensures that all possible connections have been considered.
Design Rule Report
The design rule report provides a table based view of all the design rules in force on the PCB along with clearances for each rule. It's a complete listing of specified clearances and the region of the board that they apply to.
Engineering Change Order
The engineering change order template is a skeleton report with some typical headings for the user to fill out when a design revision is required. It includes sections such as the reason for the change request along with the engineer evaluation and the authorization for the work to commence. Users can modify / add sections as required to comply with their corporate procedures.
Component Placement Report
The component placement report works together with the schematic templates to provide a grid reference for each component on the schematic. It is a simple tabular report intended to accompany printed schematics allowing reviewers to quickly locate parts based on their grid reference.
Create your own...
All of the reports in Proteus are fully customizable and the templating system allows you to add as many new reports as you want. The structured data blocks can be inserted into any report directly from the toolbar in Project Notes and reports can therefore be easily adjusted to suit corporate requirements.