[PROTEL EDA USERS]: blind vias w/ Protel / Specctra

[Todd Conard <tec@tec-tronics.com>]

I am having difficulties with the Protel / Specctra translator.  In the
following areas:

1. Blind / buried vias are not supported. Blind / buried vias definintions do
not exist in the DSN file exported to Specctra.  To get around this problem I
have been editing the DSN file and adding the defintions directly.  This is very
tedious and prone to errors as I must also remove the use_via rule for each net,
typically taking 2-3 hours.
2. Layers are not implemented correctly.  The layer stack up from Protel is not
written to the Specctra DSN file correctly.  I have to manually reorder the
layers in the design file prior to importing into Specctra.
3. Classes are not implemented.  Protel does not transfer the class definitions
to the Specctra DSN file so that addition rules can be added or modified within
the autorouter.
3. Rules are not implemented correctly.  Protel automatically converts its rule
definitions to individual net rules.  This is very annoying, as mentioned in #1,
it compounds the error of not implementing blind/buried vias but instantiating
the mistake within every single net.

This is only what I have found so far.  I am very fearful of the additional
problems that I will encounter.  Will I route the board in Specctra to
completion only to find that I can't get it back to Protel for gerber
generation?  If I make a schematic or footprint change, I will be spending
another 2-3 hours editing the DSN file.  What happens if I edit the DSN file
incorrectly?  This process should not require such tedious manual editing.

It has been a week and I still wait for support from Protel on these issues.  I
have searched diligently for detailed documention to no avail.  If there is
anybody out there that knows how to solve these problems or more immediately how
to get around them, please let me know.

Thank you all,

Todd Conard
Si Solutions
tec@s-i-solutions.com
813-630-1911