Restore Ref Des

Forward annotations and ECOs are supposed to update your netlist — but when a component’s part number changes, Expedition often resets that component’s reference designator text back to its default size, orientation, and location. On a dense board, hunting down every disturbed RefDes and nudging it back by hand is exactly the kind of repetitive, click-heavy cleanup that quietly eats an afternoon.

Restore Ref Des removes that cleanup entirely. Before you run the change, it captures the exact state of every assembly and silkscreen reference designator on the board. After the forward annotation or ECO, one click puts them all back precisely where — and how — they were.

Using the tool

The workflow is two clicks, on either side of your change:

• Get Ref Des Info — run this before the forward annotation or ECO. It gathers the position and formatting of every assembly- and silkscreen-layer reference designator and saves that snapshot to disk. The progress bar tracks it as it works through the component list.
• Restore Ref Des — run this after the change. It reads the snapshot back and reapplies the saved justification, orientation, height, stroke width, and X/Y position to each matching designator.
• Exit — closes the tool.

Assumptions

This tool restores placement and formatting by matching on reference designator, so a few conditions must hold for the results to be correct:

• No copper has changed on the PCB.
• The only thing that has changed is the part number of a given component — the footprint is the same as before.
• Ref Des text may have been set to default size, location, etc. with the forward annotation or ECO.
• If components (i.e. a specific reference designator) have changed footprints or moved to different locations in the schematic, this tool will not work and will produce bad results.

Under the hood

When you click Get Ref Des Info, the tool records — for every assembly and silkscreen reference designator on the board — its horizontal and vertical justification, orientation, text height, stroke width, and exact X/Y position. That data is written to a file named restore_ref_des.txt in the \PCB\Config folder of the active design.

That location is deliberate. Anything stored in the design’s Config folder travels with the design — through forward annotations, uploads to EDM (if you use it), and any move or copy of the entire design folder. The snapshot is therefore safe from being lost, deleted, or corrupted by the very design updates you’re protecting against, and it’s still there waiting when you come back to restore.

Every mouse click costs you money. Restore Ref Des turns a tedious, board-wide cleanup pass into a single click — and guarantees your reference designators land back exactly where you placed them.