Altium - Impossible sudden error

[ricko_uk]

I just re-posted this in the Altium section but for some reason when I press remove it does not delete this post. Supervisor might be able to? Please post any answers in my same post in the Altium section.

Hi,
in 20 years of using Altium this has never happened to me before...

I have a large complex FLAT design (i.e. no multi-channel nor hierarchical) which design which I used plenty of time as base design for other projects. It always compiled perfectly with no errors and so did all projects I derived from it.

Today I used it again to start a new project and I added various components. I kept compiling all along and it was all ok every time I compiled it. Then after adding a couple of more components it suddenly started giving more than 100 (!!) errors "Duplicate net name wires xxxx". That occurs for 90% of the nets that never gave any errors before and that I have not touched (nor connected to) when adding those few new components.

That occurs whether I select the project to be flat configuration or automatic. In either case, being a flat design, any duplicate net labels should just connect together not give an error.

I removed the components most recently added (since the previous succesfull compile) just in case they cause it, but those errors remained. Hundreds of them all addressing hundreds of nets which previously (for years!) always compiled without any errors.

Side note... The error "Duplicate net name wires xxxx" is not listed in the Error Reporting menu where you can change any error into Warning or Error... The nearest listed is "Duplicate Nets". I don't remember if they are the same or not. Usually they use the same name. Maybe they are but after 14 hours in front of the computer I might be getting a little confused.

Anyway... Any suggestions what it could be and how to solve it? Maybe some "clean net" or "hard recompile" type solution?

Any suggestion greatly appreciated!!

Many thanks

[frogblender]

I just re-posted this in the Altium section but for some reason when I press remove it does not delete this post. Supervisor might be able to? Please post any answers in my same post in the Altium section.

Hi,
in 20 years of using Altium this has never happened to me before...

I have a large complex FLAT design (i.e. no multi-channel nor hierarchical) which design which I used plenty of time as base design for other projects. It always compiled perfectly with no errors and so did all projects I derived from it.

Today I used it again to start a new project and I added various components. I kept compiling all along and it was all ok every time I compiled it. Then after adding a couple of more components it suddenly started giving more than 100 (!!) errors "Duplicate net name wires xxxx". That occurs for 90% of the nets that never gave any errors before and that I have not touched (nor connected to) when adding those few new components.

That occurs whether I select the project to be flat configuration or automatic. In either case, being a flat design, any duplicate net labels should just connect together not give an error.

I removed the components most recently added (since the previous succesfull compile) just in case they cause it, but those errors remained. Hundreds of them all addressing hundreds of nets which previously (for years!) always compiled without any errors.

Side note... The error "Duplicate net name wires xxxx" is not listed in the Error Reporting menu where you can change any error into Warning or Error... The nearest listed is "Duplicate Nets". I don't remember if they are the same or not. Usually they use the same name. Maybe they are but after 14 hours in front of the computer I might be getting a little confused.

Anyway... Any suggestions what it could be and how to solve it? Maybe some "clean net" or "hard recompile" type solution?

Any suggestion greatly appreciated!!

Many thanks

Hi @ricko_uk  ....  did you ever figure this out?   I have a heirarc. design, and am flooding with "Duplicate net name" errors also.  I am baffled.

[jmelson]

Just for the hell of it, run memtest86 on your computer.  This sounds like soomething that happened to me with Protel99 a long time ago.  Crazy errors with no rhyme or reason.  It turned out to be bad memory.

Also, one thing on Protel that would screw up the netlist was a schematic component with two different pins with the same pin number.  They had no system to detect that, and it was an easy mistale to make when creating big schematic symbols with lots of pins.

Jon

[E-Design]

I had this before in a multichannel design where I had a bus entering into a repeat block. I had to delete the net name and add it again (same name) and all the errors mysteriously went away.
Cant say that I understand what actually fixed it, but try removing net names and re-adding them ?

[ricko_uk]

Hi frogblender,

yes, for every sheet I selected all in that sheet then cut and pasted pack in the same sheet. Then saved.

Hope that helps.