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      <title>Component naming and numbering</title>
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      <div class="title_topic2" id="xps10_pagetitle">Component naming and numbering</div>
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      <p class="para_topic">The IDF standard (versions 2, 3 and 4) supports three labels for identifying components on the PCB. They are:</p>
      <ul>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Reference Designator </p>
         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Part Name (sometimes referred to as Package Name or Geometry Name or Footprint Name) </p>
         </li>
         <li>
            <p class="para_item">Part Number (sometimes referred to as Component Number) </p>
         </li>
      </ul>
      <p class="para_topic">Part names and part numbers provide the means for mapping between ECAD components and MCAD components. Both are required to provide a complete mapping between the two CAD applications. However, ECAD component name and number don't directly map to the MCAD concept of part name and number. Component or package name describes the physically packaging. Many component numbers can share the same package name. For example, many electrical components use DIP16 packages. If the MCAD user was to create a unique part for every electrical component number, vs a a unique part for every component package (unique geometry) the MCAD library could be as much as 10X larger. Because of this library issue, PCB.x stores the component number as an attribute of the assembly component.</p>
      <p class="para_topic">The following table defines the mapping of component labels between ECAD and MCAD.</p>
      <table border="3" align="center">
         <tr>
            <th colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_th">ECAD Label</p>
            </th>
            <th colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_th">NX Label</p>
            </th>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Component Name (Package, Geometry or Footprint Name)</p>
            </td>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Part Name</p>
            </td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Component Part Number</p>
            </td>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Stored as component attribute in NX</p>
            </td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Reference Designator</p>
            </td>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Assembly component name in NX</p>
            </td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Board Name</p>
            </td>
            <td colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Board Part Name</p>
            </td>
         </tr>
      </table><br><div class="title_division"> Problem characters in component names</div>
      <p class="para_division">Several non-alphanumeric characters are not allowed in NX part names. These characters may occur in your ECAD libraries. In order to solve this problem when writing NX models from PCB.xchange a character swapping capability is provided. To define illegal characters to be swapped for legal NX characters, create WriteCharSwap entries in the  <i class="fileName">pcbx_ug_model.ini</i> file. This is a table of illegal characters to swap for other permitted NX characters in Part Name and Numbers. Note that this swap is done in one direction only - when writing (exporting) PCB assemblies from PCB.xchange to NX.
      </p>
      <p class="para_division">The swap of characters is also applied to the board name.</p>
      <div class="title_division"> Component name/number mapping</div>
      <p class="para_division">If you want to maintain different part name and numbers or map part name and numbers on some components between your MCAD and ECAD package then you can create a component mapping table. See  <em>Component Mapping</em> for details.
      </p>
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