1Introduction
Drawing Notes is a productivity tool for Mentor Xpedition PCB designers. It builds the block of fabrication or assembly notes that appears on a drawing — the kind of notes that specify material, finish, hole plating, impedance requirements, silkscreen color, and so on — and places them directly onto the active drawing on a chosen user layer.
Instead of typing notes one line at a time, you start from a master library of pre-written notes kept in a setup file. For each note you can switch it on or off, change the wording, pick from pre-built options where the note allows it, and tag it with a flag so it gets a numbered shape next to it. The compiled output updates in a preview window as you make changes, so you can see exactly what will appear on the drawing before you place anything.
The tool also includes built-in helpers for the things designers commonly add along with the notes block: it can scan the active board and produce impedance text describing every unique trace width / spacing / layer / dielectric combination it finds; it can place leader arrows with text or numbered flag callouts; and it can drop a flag shape around any existing piece of drawing text in one click.
2Requirements & Setup
Before launching Drawing Notes, the following need to be in place:
- Mentor Xpedition PCB must always be running with your board database open. The tool reads board information from the Xpedition PCB database that the other host applications don’t expose (layer count, impedance scanning, layer stack-up), and Xpedition PCB also serves as the fallback destination for the placed notes when no other host application is open.
- Optionally, a Drawing Editor session or a FabLink session can also be open for the design you want the notes placed onto. The tool picks where to send the notes by priority: if Drawing Editor is open, the notes go there; otherwise, if FabLink is open, they go into the FabLink design; otherwise, they go directly into the open Xpedition PCB design. Throughout the rest of this guide, whichever of these three is currently receiving the notes is referred to as the host application.
- A valid ExactCAD license must be applied. If no license code has been applied to this user account, the tool will display a licensing error on startup and exit. Apply your license code using the ExactCAD Licensing tool before launching.
- A setup file must exist in the install’s setup folder. The setup file (an XML file) defines the master library of notes and the visual settings the tool starts up with. It is installed automatically with the tool, but you may want to customise it before the first real run — see Section 3.
- A flag data file must also exist in the setup folder. This file contains the geometry of the eleven flag shapes (hexagon, pentagon, square, triangles, circle, etc.) used to mark numbered notes. It is also installed automatically.
123456-401_001.tgz) that any note in the setup file can reference through the odb_filename database option — the supplied default fabrication-spec note uses it to call out the ODB++ data file. You can answer No and still proceed normally; the fields are only used by notes that reference them.3The Setup File
The setup file is the heart of the tool. Everything that appears in the editor when the tool launches — the list of notes, their default wording, which notes are flagged by default, available dropdown options, font, column width, where the notes get placed on the drawing — comes from this file. You only need to edit it once for your company or template; from then on you just use it.
3.1 What the Setup File Holds
The setup file is divided into two sections: one for PCB fabrication notes and one for PCB assembly notes. Each section can hold any number of notes. For each note the file records:
- A short name that identifies the note inside the tool (for example “MATERIAL” or “FINISH”).
- The default text that will appear in the editor when the tool opens.
- Whether the note is flagged by default. Flagged notes get a numbered shape next to them and can also be called out from anywhere on the drawing.
- Optional dropdown choices. Any place in the default text where you want the user to choose from a list (for example, soldermask color: green / black / red / blue) is written as
[option Choice Name]. The file then lists the choices that should appear in the dropdown for that option. Mark the default choice with a leading!character. - Database options. Instead of a hard-coded choice list, an option can be linked to a live value from the PCB database. The tool currently supports three:
layercountfills in with the actual number of conductive layers in the open board;impedancesis filled in by the impedance scanner described in Section 9; andodb_filenametakes the board part number and revision you supply at startup and joins them into an ODB++ filename string.
The setup file also stores the global defaults: which font to use, default note text height, minimum and maximum text height, column width, column-to-column pitch, column height, the X/Y placement origin on the drawing, the gap between the note number and the note text, the default flag shape, and the line-width and arrowhead dimensions used by the leader actions described in Section 11.
note_unit entry near the top of each section tells the tool which unit was used, and the tool converts everything to the drawing’s current unit when it loads. The fabrication-notes section and the assembly-notes section can use different units if you want.3.2 Note Text Markup
Inside a note’s default text, three pieces of markup are recognized:
| Markup | Effect |
|---|---|
| [option NAME] | Inserts a dropdown for the option named NAME. The dropdown choices are listed under a matching <option NAME> block elsewhere in the note’s definition. The chosen value replaces the placeholder when the note is compiled. |
| @bullet | Marks the line as a bulleted item in the compiled output. A small filled dot is drawn at the start of the line and the line is indented one level. Use this for sub-points beneath a parent line of text. The bullet implies its own indent — you do not need to add @indent as well unless you want a deeper level. |
| @indent | Marks the line as indented one level. On its own (with no bullet), it just shifts the line right. Combined with @bullet as @indent@bullet, it produces a bulleted item indented one additional level deeper than a plain @bullet line — useful for nested sub-bullets. |
4Window Layout
When the tool opens you will see a single large window divided into three regions:
- A control strip across the top. This holds the choice between fabrication notes and assembly notes, plus the font name and font size for the compiled output.
- An editor panel on the left. One scrollable card per note. Each card lets you edit the default text, toggle the note on or off, toggle the flag, and pick from any option dropdowns the note defines. Cards can be dragged up or down to reorder the notes.
- A live preview panel on the right. This shows what the finished notes block will look like when placed on the drawing, including the note header, the numbered (and optionally flagged) notes, bullets, indents, and column wrapping. It updates as you edit.
Across the bottom is a strip of action buttons (add a new note, open the impedance helper, place the notes on the drawing, flag a selected piece of drawing text, add a leader, delete previously placed notes, open the setup file for editing) and a few small fields (column width and output layer).
5Editing the Notes
Most of the work you will do in the tool happens in the editor panel on the left. Each note appears as its own card, and the cards are stacked in note-number order from top to bottom.
5.1 Note Cards Explained
Every card carries the same set of controls:
| Element | Purpose & Behavior |
|---|---|
| Card header(label) | Shows the note number and the note’s short name. If the note has been switched off, the header changes to show that the note is unused and the number is cleared. |
| Inclusion toggle(checkbox just above the text box, on the right) | Tick this to include the note in the placed output. Untick it to drop the note from the compiled list without deleting it from the library — useful when a particular board doesn’t need a note that’s normally always present. Notes that are switched off are skipped in the preview and in placement, and the remaining notes renumber automatically. |
| Flag toggle(checkbox next to the inclusion toggle) | Tick to have the note’s number drawn inside a flag shape. Untick for a plain number. The shape used is whichever flag style is currently selected (see Section 8). The preview updates immediately. |
| Default note text(multi-line text box) | The wording for the note. You can edit it freely — type, paste, delete, the usual. Any change you make is reflected in the live preview as you type. The text box grows automatically as you add lines. |
| Option dropdowns(one per option in the note) | If the note’s default text contains placeholders, one dropdown will appear for each placeholder below the text box. Pick a value and the placeholder is replaced with your selection everywhere it appears in the text. Options linked to live board values (number of layers, impedance summary) show those values automatically and do not appear as user-editable dropdowns. |
5.2 Reordering & Renumbering
You can change the order in which the notes appear in the placed output simply by dragging a card up or down in the editor panel. Press and hold the left mouse button anywhere on the card’s background, move the card to its new position, and release. The cards behind it shift to make room, and every card is renumbered top-to-bottom in the new order. The preview redraws immediately to match.
Notes that have been switched off keep their place in the stack but do not contribute a number — the numbering jumps over them. If you re-enable a switched-off note later, it picks up the next available number at its position in the stack.
5.3 Switching Note Sets
The setup file contains two separate note libraries: one for PCB fabrication notes and one for PCB assembly notes. A pair of choice buttons in the top control strip lets you flip between them at any time. The editor panel and preview both reload to show whichever set is active. You normally work on one drawing at a time, so you set the right mode at the start and leave it there until you switch drawings.
6Adding a New Note
The setup file gives you a starting library, but you can also add a brand new note on the fly without editing the file. Pressing the add-a-note action at the bottom-left opens a small dialog with two fields:
| Field | Purpose & Behavior |
|---|---|
| Short name(single-line text) | A name that identifies the note inside the tool. Use something brief and unique (for example, “CUSTOM RoHS”). It is shown in the card header but does not appear in the placed output. The name cannot be blank. |
| Note wording(multi-line text) | The actual text of the note — this is what will be drawn on the drawing when the note is placed. |
| Confirm(button) | Adds the new note to the current session’s editor panel as a new card. The new note is automatically switched on and flagged, and it is given the next available note number. The dialog then closes. |
7Appearance & Output Settings
Four settings control how the notes look on the placed drawing and where they go. They are all available without opening the setup file.
| Setting | Purpose & Behavior |
|---|---|
| Note font(dropdown, top right) | Picks the font face used to draw the notes on the drawing. The dropdown lists every font installed on the current computer. The default loaded from the setup file is shown as the initial choice. If the font named in the setup file is not installed on this PC, you will be warned on startup — install the font, or pick a different one here. |
| Text height(text field, top right) | The height of the note text in the drawing’s current units. The unit is shown in a small label next to the field (for example, “th” for thousandths of an inch, or “mm”). If you enter a value outside the minimum and maximum range set in the setup file, you will be asked to confirm before the value is accepted. |
| Column width(text field, bottom right) | The width of one column of notes, in the drawing’s current units. Text in the preview and on the drawing wraps to fit this width. If a single column would be taller than the configured column height, the tool starts a new column to the right when placing. |
| Output layer(dropdown, bottom) | The user layer that the placed notes, flags, leaders, and callouts will be drawn on. The dropdown lists every user layer in the active document of the host application. The default loaded from the setup file is shown as the initial choice. You can switch to any other user layer in the document; subsequent placements go to the new layer. |
8Choosing the Flag Style
Drawing Notes ships with eleven flag shapes for marking numbered notes and call-outs: a hexagon, a pentagon, a rounded-corner square, a sharp-corner square, six triangle variants (a rounded and a sharp version for each of the three directions — pointing left, pointing right, and pointing up), and a circle.
Pressing the small action button to the right of the font controls opens a flag selection dialog.
The dialog shows previews of all eleven shapes alongside a labelled choice for each one. Pick the style you want; the small preview swatch in the main window updates immediately to match, and any flagged notes in the live preview and on subsequent placements will use that shape.
Once the dialog is closed, the chosen style is remembered for the rest of the session. The default style for a fresh session is set in the setup file.
9Impedances From the Board
Most fabrication note packages include a list of every controlled-impedance trace on the board, broken down by trace width, spacing (for differential pairs), routing layer, and dielectric stack above and below the trace. Maintaining this list by hand is tedious and error-prone. Drawing Notes can build the list for you by scanning the open PCB.
The impedance helper is opened from the action button labelled for impedances.
It is a separate window with two tables — one for differential-pair impedances and one for single-ended impedances — and a small set of controls above them.
9.1 Scanning the Board
Two controls at the top let you set the rules for the scan:
| Control | Purpose & Behavior |
|---|---|
| Output units(dropdown) | Picks the unit (mils, inches, mm, or microns) in which trace width, spacing, and dielectric heights are reported. Changing this re-scales any value already shown. |
| Minimum trace length(text field) | Any trace shorter than this length will be ignored during the scan. This filters out tiny stubs and fanout segments that don’t carry signals far enough to matter for an impedance specification. The value is given in the current output units. |
| Start the scan(button) | Reads every trace in the open PCB design, computes the impedance, looks up the surrounding dielectric heights and dielectric constants from the layer stack, and adds a row to either the differential or the single-ended table depending on the trace type. Progress is shown on a status bar below the tables. |
The two tables show the relevant parameters for each unique impedance signature found:
- Trace width — the finished conductor width in the chosen unit.
- Differential spacing — for differential rows only, the edge-to-edge spacing between the two traces.
- Dielectric heights (h1, h2) — the thickness of the dielectric layer above and below the trace.
- Dielectric constants (h1 ER, h2 ER) — the relative permittivity of those same dielectric layers, from the stack-up.
- Layers — the routing layers on which this combination was found.
- Impedance — the computed impedance in ohms, taken from Xpedition’s own calculation for the trace.
9.2 Cleaning Up the Table
Each row in either table has a checkbox at its left edge that selects the row for an action. Two buttons act on the selected rows:
| Action | Purpose & Behavior |
|---|---|
| Delete selected rows(button) | Removes the ticked rows from whichever of the two tables they belong to. You will be asked to confirm before the deletion goes through. Useful for dropping impedance lines that aren’t actually controlled on this board. |
| Combine selected rows(button) | Merges two or more rows into one. Use this when the same trace geometry appears on multiple layers but you want to express it as a single line in the fabrication notes (for example, “5 mil traces, layers 3 and 6, 50 ohms”). See the next sub-section for details. |
9.3 Combining Equivalent Rows
When you combine rows, a small follow-up window appears that shows the selected rows again and asks you to pick exactly one row to keep as the “master”. The layer numbers of the other selected rows are merged into that master row’s layer list, and the other rows are removed from the main table. If the rows you picked do not have matching trace widths or matching spacings, you will be asked to confirm before the combine goes through — usually this is a sign that you have selected unrelated rows by accident.
9.4 Pushing to the Notes
When the tables look right, pressing the update action sends a summary of every remaining row back into the main Drawing Notes window. Any note in the master library that references the impedance database value will redraw immediately to include the new summary lines.
You can close the impedance helper at any time; it does not need to stay open for the values to remain in the notes.
10Placing Notes on the Drawing
Once the editor and the preview show what you want, pressing the action to place the notes draws the compiled note block onto the active drawing. The notes are placed at the X / Y origin specified in the setup file, in the chosen font and text height, on the chosen user layer.
Placement is wrapped in a transaction, so if anything fails partway through, the drawing is left unchanged. If a single column would run past the column height set in the setup file, the placement automatically wraps to a new column to the right.
Each note that is marked as flagged gets its number drawn inside the chosen flag shape. Each line of note text is placed as a separate piece of drawing text so it can be edited individually later in the host application.
11Leaders & Callouts
Below the live preview is a small column of three leader-placement actions. They differ only in what they add at the tail end of the leader line.
| Leader Type | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Plain leader(arrow + line only) | Click once on the feature you are calling out (the arrow tail). Move the mouse to where you want the leader to terminate; the arrow, leader line and a short horizontal stub at the end follow the cursor. Click again to place. Nothing is drawn at the end of the stub. |
| Leader with text(arrow + line + text) | Same workflow as the plain leader, except that you are prompted first to enter the text you want at the tail. The text is placed at the end of the stub, on the correct side automatically (left or right) depending on which way the leader is pointing. |
| Leader with flag callout(arrow + line + numbered flag) | Same workflow as the leader with text, but instead of plain text you are prompted for a number. The number is drawn inside the currently selected flag shape, again on the correct side of the stub automatically. |
While the rubber-band leader is following the cursor, the line, arrow, and (where applicable) text or flag are all shown as motion graphics so you can preview the placement in real time before committing.
Cancelling a Leader in Progress
If you start placing a leader and decide you don’t want it after all, the dedicated cancel action will terminate the in-progress command and clear the on-screen rubber-band graphics. Use this rather than the host application’s own cancel, which can sometimes leave the motion graphics on screen.
12Flagging Existing Text
Sometimes you have a piece of text already on the drawing — for example, a hand-placed reference number — that you want to wrap in a flag shape after the fact. The flag-this-text action does exactly that.
- In the host application, select one or more pieces of text on the drawing.
- Switch to Drawing Notes and press the flag-this-text action.
- The tool draws the currently chosen flag shape around each selected piece of text, sized to match the text’s height, on the currently chosen user layer.
13Removing Placed Notes
The clean-up action at the bottom right of the window deletes every piece of geometry that the tool has previously placed on the active drawing — the notes block header, every note number, every note line, every flag drawn around a note number, and any flag drawn around drawing text by the flag-this-text action.
Use it before placing a fresh copy of the notes after editing, or to clear a placement that landed in the wrong spot.
14Editing the Setup File
For larger or more permanent changes — adding a new note, changing the default wording of an existing note, modifying the column origin, changing the default flag style, adjusting the minimum and maximum allowable text heights — you edit the setup file directly. A dedicated action at the bottom left opens the file in your system’s default application for XML files (typically a text editor or browser).
The file is plain XML and is self-documenting: every parameter is labelled inside angle brackets (for example, <note_size>, <note_column_width>, <notes_header>) and every note appears inside its own <note> block. Save the file, close the tool, and reopen the tool — the new contents are read on startup.
Comments inside the file use a leading apostrophe (') at the start of the line — the same convention as Visual Basic source code. Anything on a line after an apostrophe is ignored by the tool, so you can freely annotate the file to remind yourself what each block is for.
<note> block, edit the name and text, and you have a new note that follows the same structure.15Typical Workflow
For a brand new drawing, a typical session looks like this:
- Open the board in Xpedition PCB Layout. Optionally, open the design in Drawing Editor or FabLink if you want the notes placed there instead of on the Xpedition PCB sheet directly. Make sure the user layer you want the notes on already exists in whichever application will receive them.
- Launch Drawing Notes. Answer the board part-number / revision prompt if your notes use those fields; otherwise dismiss it.
- Pick the right note set at the top of the window — fabrication or assembly.
- Walk down the editor panel. For each note, turn it off if it doesn’t apply to this board, toggle the flag if needed, edit the wording if needed, and pick the right value for each dropdown option.
- If your notes need an impedance summary, open the impedance helper, run the scan, delete unwanted rows, combine equivalent rows across layers, and push the result back to the notes.
- Drag note cards into your preferred order; the numbering follows automatically.
- Confirm font, text height, column width, and output layer in the control strip.
- Press the place-notes action. Verify the placement in the host application.
- Place any leaders or callouts you need around the board using the leader actions.
- If you need to revise the notes later, edit them in the Drawing Notes window, remove the previously placed notes, and place them again.
16Tips & Troubleshooting
- The tool exits immediately after launch. A licensing problem is the most common cause. Apply your license code using the ExactCAD Licensing tool, then retry. The other common cause is that Xpedition PCB Layout is not running with a board open — some board data the tool needs is not available from Drawing Editor or FabLink alone, and Xpedition PCB is required even when one of those is the host application receiving the notes.
- A warning appears that the configured font is not installed. Either install the font named in the setup file on this PC, or pick a different font from the font dropdown for this session and edit the setup file to make the new font the default.
- The output layer dropdown is missing the layer I want to use. The dropdown only lists user layers that already exist in the active document of the host application. Create the layer in the host application first, then re-open Drawing Notes.
- Placement reports that it could not find the layer. You likely have more than one session of the host application open, and the tool attached to one that does not contain the layer. Close the other sessions, open the right one, and re-launch the tool.
- Notes show up at the wrong location on the drawing. The X / Y placement origin is set inside the setup file. Edit it there to suit your title block, then save and re-open the tool. Alternatively, place the notes, then move them in the host application as a one-off.
- A note’s dropdown shows the wrong choices. Each note’s option choices are defined inside the setup file, in the same
<note>block as the note text. Edit the file to add, remove, or reorder the entries. - An impedance line is missing. Either no trace on that signature exceeds the minimum trace length filter, or the trace was deleted from the table. Lower the filter or re-run the scan; otherwise check that the trace exists in the database and is tagged with the expected net class.
- The leader rubber-band stays on screen after I cancel. Use the dedicated cancel action in the bottom strip of the main window — it removes any leftover motion graphics that the host application’s own cancel may have missed.
- The clean-up action removed something I wanted to keep. Any geometry placed by this tool is tagged for clean-up. To preserve a hand-edited leader, either move it onto a different user layer or remove the property tag in the host application before running the clean-up.
- Edits to the setup file don’t appear in the tool. The setup file is read on startup. Close Drawing Notes, then reopen it after saving the file.