I have a design using OrCAD Capture v17.2 and OrCAD PCB Designer Professional v17.2. They are currently synced up and all is good. There are gaps in the reference designators, so I would like to renumber the components. There's 2 ways I can do this:
1. Layout to Capture
From within layout, I can use Manufacture--> Auto Rename Refdes. I can rename the components however I desire. Then I can go to Capture and use Tools --> Back Annotate to import the changes and life is good. The catch is that now the reference designators are fairly random when looking at a particular schematic page/block.
2. Capture to Layout
To alleviate the issue with #1, I would like to annotate the schematic and then push it to the layout. According to community.cadence.com/.../26840, I can probably use the batch command REFTXT to do what I want, however it looks like I have to manually create the was-is file by exporting a single line per component BOM and then keeping track of changes while I change every one of the reference designators manually for nearly 650 parts. Is this manual method the only way to create the was-is file? Is there a function from within Capture that will annotate and create this was-is file for me? Is there an entirely different way to accomplish the Capture to Layout method?
Thanks.
--Mark