Deleting or Removing a SPEC or SPCOM

The terminology used here is significant:

• If a Specification (SPEC) or SPCOM is deleted, all aspects of it are eliminated from the Catalog Database DB. If an existing design includes a component with an Specification Reference (SPREF) which points to the deleted data, any future access to the Design DB, say to produce a drawing, will result in an error since no matching SPCOM will be found.

• If a SPEC or SPCOM is removed, the data held within it is transferred to a special archive Specification named /*LIMBOSPEC. The data still exists, so that references to it are still valid, but it no longer forms part of the original named SPEC. This facility is useful:

  • when a component is withdrawn from use for new designs but its continued use in existing designs is permitted

  • when use of a component is to be suspended temporarily while modifications are made.

    Note:
    If you are using more than one Catalog DB, there is one archive Specification for each DB. This avoids inadvertent transfer of data between DBs due to removal and subsequent restoration of SPECs or SPCOMs. Such multiple archive Specifications are named /*LIMBOSPEC, /*LIMBOSPEC_1, /*LIMBOSPEC_2 etc. Only the single form /*LIMBOSPEC will be referred to in the remainder of this manual.

To delete individual SPCOM lines from a SPEC, use the command syntax

DELETE spcom1 spcom2 ...

where spcom1, spcom2 etc. identify the relevant SPCOMs. For example,

/RF300

DELETE */20GA */25GA

will access the SPEC /RF300 and delete the SPCOMs /RF300/20GA and /RF300/25GA.

To delete a complete Specification, use the command syntax

DELETE SPECification specname

where specname is the name of the SPEC. For example,

/RF300

DELETE SPEC /RF300

will access and then delete the entire SPEC named /RF300.

To delete all SPCOMs from a SPEC without deleting the SPEC itself, enter the command

DELETE ALL

Note:
The DELETE command should be used with care. No checks are made against any design data before the SPCOMs are deleted and any references to such SPCOMs in a Design DB will become invalid. If in doubt, use the REMOVE command.

To remove individual SPCOM lines from a SPEC, use the command syntax

REMove spcom1 spcom2 ...

where spcom1, spcom2 etc. identify the relevant SPCOMs.

The effect of this command is to remove all answers from the named SPCOM lines, except for the pointers CATREF and DETAIL, and to transfer those SPCOMs to the archive Specification /*LIMBOSPEC. If a Specification Reference (SPREF) in a Design DB points to an SPCOM which cannot be found in the currently named SPEC, it will automatically look for that SPCOM in /*LIMBOSPEC.

To remove the entire contents of a SPEC, first use the OLD or SPEC command to access the specification, then enter the command

REMove ALL

To reinstate a removed SPCOM, make sure that you are pointing to the correct current SPEC and then use the syntax for modifying an SPCOM, but incorporate the name of the SPCOM to be reinstated. The SPCOM will automatically be moved back from /*LIMBOSPEC into the original SPEC.