Mail Archives: geda-user/2012/12/12/02:05:29
Hi all,
I start to lose track of all the diverse ideas. This post is an effort to
structure the major directions. May it be incomplete, feel free to
complete it.
In case there is a short...
I. check whether we have history, since this way the qeustion is "what
user modification introduced the short" which might be more useful
than answer "which object(s) cause(s) the short at the moment".
1. bisect using the undo buffer (as Kai-Martin Knaak does manually) -
does not work accross sessions (restart/load) and as Markus
Hitter pointed it out, fails when new netlist is loaded
2. tag objects according to their first connection as suggested by Peter
Clifton. This info could be easily saved, making it immune to reload.
Needs more thoughts on some corner cases (new netlist, user moving and
object from one net to another)
3. separate connection/netlist history (saved with the PCB). No details
yet.
II. no history available, try to highlight objects that are most likely to
help the user resolving the short. Nodes of the graph include
junctions, thermals, etc., much more verbose then the netlist.
1. propagate nets from all nodes as suggested by Peter Clifton. Doing
this in parallel may cause a collision close to the "real place
of the short"
2. find a minimal cut in a way the resulting graphs will reflect the
netlist and highlight only those cutting edge. To the end user this
means we find the smallest modification (deletion) that would fix the
problem (with or without leaving new rat lines). Sounds like an NP
hard problem, no working solution has been proposed in the thread yet.
3. Peter Clifton's remove-edges-and-see-how-that-improves-the-situation.
A good metric is needed to make sure we can measure small improvements
in cases where multiple edges must be removed to resolve the short.
Likely to select more edges than the minimum.
4.
stage 1
classify nodes/edges: each belongs to one of the affected nets or is
neutral (could be in multiple nets or could be removed without
breaking only short, not legal redundant connection in a net). Assume
only neutral nodes/edges may participate in the short. Question is how
to do the classification properly:
a. A modified version of Peter Clifton's propagation idea might work,
needs more thoughts.
b. A similar problem may be known in graph theory; Finding Steiner
tree for a net and trying to fit our nodes/edges on it would keep
the minimal amount (or length) of objects to form the net properly,
and take the rest as neutral. This Breaks badly with redundant
connections in a net. Needs more work.
stage 2
from stage 1 we already have sections with multiple nodes/edges that
are neutral and can be blamed for the short. If the user breaks each
such section, the short is resolved.
a. highlight these sections and let the user break each wherever
(s)he wants (need a way to differentiate between sections)
b. try to find the best place to cut each section
A. middle of the section
B. smallest modification (however we measure that)
C. heat up the section with the modified verison of Joshua Lansford
idea; this may be used to highlight the shortest/smallest
object
Regards,
Tibor Palinkas
- Raw text -