Backannotating connections

Sometimes, you may want to connect component pins based on their location on the board, such as connectors or FPGA IO pins. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could define these connections directly in the board editor without going back and forth between board and schematic for every connection? With horizon EDA, you can!

How To

Use the tool “Draw connection line” to connect pads or junctions as desired. Then, use “Backannotate connection lines” to send these connections over to the schematic editor. The newly created connections will appear as net stubs. After saving the schematic and reloading the netlist in the board edtior, the connection lines will automatically be replaced by airwires.

Limitations

Since this feature hasn’t been there for very long, some things are still unsupported:

  • Can’t connect two existing nets

  • Chaining connection lines (connecting two lines to one pad/junction) will not yield the expected result