Adding a border to a schematic



Standard practice on professional schematics and block diagrams is to have a border around the drawing and a title block. The title block identifies the company, the author of the drawing, date drawn, possibly revision history, etc. Companies typically have their preferred or required title block format and contents. You will note in the project documentation requirements that a border is specified.

DAIC has a border and title block (they come together) that can be used with your leaf cell schematics and system diagrams.

The easiest way to use the border is to place the border on a new schematic sheet before placing components. However, if you have already drawn the schematic the border can be added unless the amount of stuff in the drawing won't fit into the border. The border available in daic is one size (and it may not fit all).

For a new sheet: Start daic and from the palette select Open Schematic. Give the sheet a name, select edit mode, and click OK. Next, on the palette select Library. From library palette select Generic Lib. Near the bottom of the generic lib palette (you may need to scroll the palette down) is a Schematic Border selection. Click on that and a pop-up box will open and ask for the name of the drawing (typically the name of the leaf cell or system block), name of the project (I suggest you put lab1 there), and author name which defaults to your user name. Click ok and the border will appear and you can click to "set it down".

For an existing schematic: Start daic and open the schematic. zoom the circuit out so that it is only a couple inches long on the screen. Then select Library from the palette and continue as detailed above. Once the border is visible it can be moved such that the circuit is centered in the border.

The border is a component created out of comment text and with properties attached (i.e. date, author, title, etc.) Thus the select filter needs Instances on to select it.

I had an occasion where no select filter setting would allow the border to be selected. Under Miscellaneous on the tool bar are Protect and Unprotect functions. Somehow the border I was trying to select had gotten protected and I had to unprotect it before it would select.