Question on the use of Validate - Synchronize to sort out schematic to PCB out of sync

[mjstn2011]

After the last time my schematic and pcb got out of sync last week I was loosing hope in the dreaded outcome of running the ERC as it suggested which listed all sorts of things.

I had wished that I could assume my schematic was the 'master' and I could just push what it had to the pcb like on some other systems.

So I did some more searching on the exact message and found out from a Fusion support youtube that I think this is possible with Fusion and tried the following:

In schematic mode   select top menu 'Validate' then click the 2 arrows on the 'Synchronize' button.  It returned quite a few items on left and right for people who may want to do bit by bit synchronizing.   That would be very time consuming and confusing but maybe it has it's place sometimes.

So like on the youtube I saw on the left panel was Source  and right panel of the 'Synchronizer' tool was Target.  I hit  'Run' and I think what it does in that default case is just what I wanted which is assume schematic was 'master' and just pushed to hard sync up the target (pcb).   After that airwires and so on all were back to 'normal'.

My question is if my assumption is right and using default selections just hit RUN in lower right and if you want schematic to be the master  all gets sorted out?

I think now that how I get into that mess is I decide to re-do parts of the schematic so that the layout will be cleaner or to fix some signals that should have been different but I had already done some routing that was ok.

Even though I was careful to remove nets in the schematic and re-do traces the PCB software for some reason got confused perhaps almost as if not everything was cleaned up on PCB side till after I run synchronizer?

I'm a bit confused on proper methods to go back and do re-work at schematic level when maybe some of the changes are already on the pcb.

Any thoughts?   Thanks,  I wish to avoid this out of sync situation but am not really sure why it got out of sync.

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @mjstn2011 ,

I hope you're doing well. I'm happy that you were able to restore consistency using the synchronizer. 

In order for consistency to be preserved it is important to always keep the board and schematic open at the same time together. If at any point you are working on one editor and close the other that's where consistency can break. This is the most typical cause.

You can avoid all of the work above by always keeping the schematic and board open.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[mjstn2011]

Thanks @jorge_garcia .  Yes I know and have seen the warnings on keeping schematic and pcb open and try to always do that.

My question is that when it happens (for whatever reason) is the function of the synchronizer to consider the 'Source' (Schematic) as the 'master' and then adjust the pcb to be back in sync with the schematic (as best it can).    I never intentionally change things in pcb layer unless it is by some accident.   So I try hard to keep schematic as the key to how I want things.

I will continue to try best I can to always have both open of course but clearly,  'do do' happens and I'm hoping the synchronizer can do it's best to sort things.

I have left it as defaults where 'Show or hide' has  checks for 'Add', 'Modify' and 'Remove'.  In Show excluded the 'Exclude' is not checked.

Can you point to some current docs for running the Synchronizer so I can better understand what it tries to do per which checkboxes are clicked?  Thanks

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hi @mjstn2011 ,

Your interpretation is correct. This is what it's doing.

Here's the available documentation on how it works and how it can be used.
https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=ECD-SYNCH-DOCS-CPT

There is also a short video on it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqkA11Z9a_c

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,