In Pulsonix a Schematics design can consist of multiple pages, each representing a separate sheet of the final schematic. This is known as ‘flat multi-page’, which is described in more detail below. Pulsonix also has sophisticated Hierarchical Design tools allowing bottom up, top down and many other design methodologies. The Page Link features described below may still be useful even in a true hierarchical design.
Flat multi-page designs are generally used to split up large complex designs so that they fit onto the paper size used to document them. You can add links between these pages enabling a page to refer to another page. These links enable you to easily switch the current page you are editing to the page referred to.
Locating these options
Available from: Insert menu > Attribute > Attribute Name:
Available from: Insert menu > Page Link option
Adding Page Links
Pulsonix page linking is performed using the special
There are three ways of adding a page link attribute.
- Use the Insert Attribute
option from the Insert menu. Select
from the list of attribute names and type the required page name. - Select the item you wish to add the link to, or select nothing if the link is to be added to the schematics page itself. Right click the mouse to use the Insert Page Link option from the shortcut menu. Choose from a list of names of the pages in the schematic, or type the name of a future page to be linked to. The attribute will then be added.
- Add a page link to a net by starting or ending a connection on a page link symbol. See the section on Cross Page Signal References below for more details.
The page link attribute may be visible, in which case you can use it directly to switch pages as mentioned above, or it may be left invisible. If invisible then selecting the item the page link is on will allow switching pages using the shortcut menu.
Interacting With Page Links
- Double click on a visible page link attribute to switch pages, if the named page exists.
- Select the page link attribute, or the item the attribute is on and right click the mouse to use the shortcut menu.
- Use Jump To Page to switch to the page referred to.
- Use Change Page Link to alter the name of the page
the link refers to, or to change the visibility of the
attribute. - With nothing selected, right click the mouse to use the shortcut menu. If this page is itself linked to another page you will be able to use Jump To Page and Change Page Link, mentioned in the previous section.
Deleting Page Links
- Select the page link attribute, or the item the attribute is on and right click the mouse to use the shortcut menu.
- Use Change Page Link to delete the page link.
- To delete the page link, leave the Page: field blank and press OK.
When To Use Page Links
Documentation References
Often the sheet outline title block contains lists of the names of the other pages that make up the design. Adding these names as page link attributes means you can also use them to switch pages.
Cross Page Signal References
Where separate pages are simply used to split up a complex design, you have the situation where a connection leaves one page and enters another. This is usually done by ending the connection on a symbol that represents an off- page connector, with the name of the page it is going to next to it.
Pulsonix handles this by ending the connection on a single pin documentation symbol that has a page link attribute. The advantage of this is you can actually use these symbols to switch to the page that the connection is going to.
To make it easier to do this, when adding connections on global nets, you can right click the mouse to use the shortcut menu to start, or end, the connection on a page link symbol. You simply have to choose the name of the symbol to use and the name of the page to link to and an off page link will be dropped into the design. See the End Connection On help page for more details.
If you want the connection linked to two (or more) pages then add multiple page link symbols, place them on top of each other and reposition the page link attributes so that you can see them all. Whichever attribute you double click on will define the page that it will jump to.
You can use the Electrical Rules Check feature from the Tools menu to check for unmatched page links.
Related Topics
Insert Attribute | Insert Page Link | Change Page Link | Delete Page Link | Jump To Page | Matching Page Links Check