Shortcuts

In a number of locations throughout PCB123 – especially where specifying pin or landing pad names – users can use some shortcut notations to speed up and simplify the process of adding pin names.

A Bar (line) can be placed over pin names and net names by appending two consecutive hyphens (--) to the end of the name.

Sequences of pin names, pin numbers, and net names can be generated using shorthand notation. All shorthand within a base name appears inside square brackets ([]), and will expand using the following rules:

• [NAME1, NAME2, NAME3, …] – Disjointed list. A list of names separated by commas will expand once for each name when placing consecutive objects. Example:

  INTENS_[RED,GREEN,BLUE] expands for the next three items as:

  INTENS_RED
  INTENS_GREEN
  INTENS_BLUE
  

• [#:#(:#)] – Numeric Range. Two numbers separated by a colon (:) denote an inclusive sequential range. If a third number is supplied, then it is the increment, or step, to be used when generating the sequence. Example:

  ADDR[3:0] expands for the next 4 items as:

  ADDR3
  ADDR2
  ADDR1
  ADDR0
  

  [0:100:10]_DEC expands to:

  0_DEC
  10_DEC
  20_DEC
  30_DEC
  40_DEC
  50_DEC
  60_DEC
  70_DEC
  80_DEC
  90_DEC
  100_DEC