Austin, I think the point we are missing is Mentor doesn't want to support Allegro, they would like you to use Expedition or any other Mentor product. My local Mentor rep (kudos to Rick Lloyd) has shown me all sorts of nifty stuff to make DXDesigner play nicely with Allegro even though he didn't have to.. Mentor doesn't want to lose the DXDesigner business so they will help you. How is Mentor supposed to know what your specific questions are? Have to talked with your area rep about your concerns? The tool goes way beyond bringing netlists in. I've been able to do line widths, net lengths, prop delay, etc. I've been doing more of my stuff in constraint manager but there ain't nothing wrong with DxDesigner. I hope I was able to better express my point this go round. :) Cheers, Ron Scott C.I.D. Texas Instruments Storage Products Group Tel: 214.567.4715 Cell: 972.816.7978 Fax: 972.761.5070 rg-scott@xxxxxx ________________________________ From: icu-pcb-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:icu-pcb-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of richard moffat Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 17:02 To: icu-pcb-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [PCB_FORUM] Re: DxDesigner to Allegro... Austin, You're complaining to the wrong people. People on this forum generally try to help. I suggest you start a blog. Regards, Richard >>> austin@xxxxxxxxxxxx 27/10/2005 10:44 a.m. >>> Hi Ron, I believe I started this... I have no doubt it "works" to some level, but the thing I'm trying to ferret out is what that level is. I know it can give me the netlist, but what beyond the netlist...as I have a simple netlist translator already that does that without paying $2500 for it. Mentor has no datasheets for it, and basically won't tell me anything about it unless I ask specific questions. I'm amazed anyone would buy this "product" without understanding what it is they are getting for their money. But, perhaps, that's because the money for these things comes directly out of my pocket...not some corporations, so I care. The Mentor interface does not support crossprobing or decal preview. It does do back-annotation, something I would not be able to do easily (I don't think) with my simple translation program...but in reality, I don't use back-annotation anyway. Something my program doesn't do now is support attribute passing, but that is probably quite easy to add support for and is something I'd prefer to add to my program than pay Mentor $2500 just to get. I must admit, I'm not impressed at what you get (or don't get for that matter) for $2500 from this Mentor product. Regards, Austin -----Original Message----- From: icu-pcb-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:icu-pcb-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Scott, Ron Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 5:19 PM To: icu-pcb-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [PCB_FORUM] Re: DxDesigner to Allegro... All, I can see there is a ton of traffic on this subject. I have used the Viewlogic/DXDesigner in conjunction with Allegro for 10 years and I don't have any problem passing attributes along with the netlist. I have modified the config files a little bit to eliminate random associations of power/gnd related stuff but no problems at all. Cheers, Ron Scott C.I.D. Texas Instruments Storage Products Group Tel: 214.567.4715 Cell: 972.816.7978 Fax: 972.761.5070 rg-scott@xxxxxx NOTICE: This message contains privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this message in error please notify Allied Telesyn Research Ltd immediately. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender has the authority to issue and specifically states them to be the views of Allied Telesyn Research.