Differences between

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Modified by Admin on Nov 6, 2013

The Difference Between... Dialog.

Summary

The Differences between dialog enables you to browse through differences that have been found between the two documents you chose to compare in the Choose Documents To Compare dialog. For each difference, you can decide whether to update one of the documents or not, ultimately creating an Engineering Change Order (ECO), in order to synchronize the documents as required.

Access

In Choose Documents to Compare dialog (Project » Show Differences), enable advanced mode, choose two documents for comparison, then click OK.

Options/Controls

The Differences between dialog is basically divided into three main areas - Differences, Update and Change Order.

Differences

The Differences area lists all differences that the Comparator has found between your two chosen documents. Each difference is listed in the corresponding column for the document in which it resides. Differences are grouped by comparison type - as listed, and enabled, in the Comparator tab of the Options for Project dialog.

Update

The Update area, as its name suggests, is where you can specify which document should be updated in order to remedy the difference. By default (and for safety), all difference entries initially have a decision of No Change applied to them.
The update decision for each difference can be individually determined by clicking on the associated entry in the Decision column and selecting the required update action in the subsequent pop-up dialog. Simply choose the direction of the update (which of the compared documents to update) or no updates at all.

The right-click menu offers the following commands that can be applied to all difference entries, all selected entries, or all entries of the same comparison type:

Update right-hand document (as viewed in the Differences region of the dialog).
Update left-hand document (again, as viewed in the Differences region of the dialog).
Reverse direction of update.
Set no updates (No Changes).

Change Order

The Change Order area of the dialog simply lists, for each difference that you decide to act upon, the action to be taken, the object affected by the action and the document upon which the action will be carried out. If the Update entry for a difference is No Change, there will be no action taken.

The Change Order column will display the action required for each decision. After determining which ECO decisions are required, you can apply the ECO to update the design documents.
You can double click on an entry in one of the Differences columns to cross probe to that design object however this dialog is still active. This can be used to complement the Explore Differences button.

Common actions that will be listed in this area are: the removal of objects - where the update is in the direction of the document that contains the object causing the difference; the addition of objects - where the update is in the direction of the document that does not contain the object causing the difference; and update - where both documents contain the same object that differs in some way.

Buttons

After you have reviewed each difference, in terms of whether an update should be made and in which direction, click the Create Engineering Change Order button. The Engineering Change Order dialog will appear, from where you can validate and execute the updates, in order to synchronize the documents.

Use the Report Differences button to open the Report Preview dialog, from where you can set up and print a report for the differences found by the Comparator and the decisions you have decided to make and that will be included in the generated ECO.

If you want to investigate further the differences found by the Comparator, prior to generating an ECO, then use the Explore Differences button. The dialog will close and you will be returned to the main workspace, with the Differences panel made visible. The panel will contain all of the differences listed by the Comparator and in the same categories. Use the panel to cross probe to an object responsible for a difference, on its parent document.

Create Engineering Change Order - Clicking on this button displays the Engineering Change Order dialog which allows you to validate and execute the engineering change order (based on defined decisions in the Update column) to update the affected design documents. You can also generate a Change Order report.
Report Differences - Click this button to preview the differences report with a table of the differences in connectivity and other invalid design issues between the source documents and the board design.
Explore Differences - Click this button to investigate the differences detected in the board design, which are listed in a Differences panel and you can click on an entry from this panel to zoom in this design object.
Grid - Clicking in the Update column for a design difference will display the ECO-Decision dialog, from where you can define the decision update - either direction for synchronization of design documents or do nothing.

Notes

The title of the dialog will depend on the documents you have chosen to compare, but the functionality of the dialog will be the same.

The Synchronizer is bi-directional. This means that you can specify updates to both documents in the same ECO.

Not all difference updates can be pushed from the PCB back to the schematic document(s). The right-click menu items will, in such cases, not allow the direction to be set to the left (i.e. the schematic document(s)). If you select this direction individually - by clicking on the associated entry in the Decision column - the ECO that is created will not contain the update, reinforcing the fact that such a change to the schematic document is not possible/supported.

The types of differences that are checked by the Comparator and the modification actions allowed for inclusion in an ECO are defined in the Comparator and ECO Generation tabs of the Options for Project dialog.

Using the Explore Differences button will cause any update settings you have made in the Differences between dialog to be lost - you will need to open the dialog again and setup the update decisions once more as required.

You can also view offending objects that generate the differences by double-clicking on a difference entry in the Differences between dialog. Make sure the relevant document is active in the main design window if you wish to jump directly to the offending object. If not, the cross probe will still occur, but the document will not be automatically made active. The dialog will remain open. Visual display of the object is in accordance with the highlighting options defined in the Options tab of the Options for Project dialog.