Shcematic to pcb Software

[lars-musik]

+1 for Diptrace.

You can get a 500 pin/2 layers version for free. Here: http://diptrace.com/buy/non-profit/

Altough I am usually quite adept with computers, I never got used to eagle. Diptrace was my friend right from the start.

[vigilante397]

Altough I am usually quite adept with computers, I never got used to eagle. Diptrace was my friend right from the start.

+1 My sentiments exactly.

[rullywowr]

DipTrace is awesome.  eagle makes me want to stay myself in the eye.   All the PCBs I have on www.rullywow.com were designed with DipTrace. 

I also have a pedal-specific library for DT in a thread on another forum - it's a great help. 

[vigilante397]

I also have a pedal-specific library for DT in a thread on another forum - it's a great help.

Your pedal libraries are the only reason I'm able to do what I do. Thank you for your excellent work good sir.

[Ice-9]

+1 for diptrace the free version has a 300 hole capacity and two layers not 500 hole.

[J0K3RX]

Another +1 / It's a "no brainer" for Diptrace... and the auto route ain't bad, of course you have to go over it and adjust everything and fix a few things but that's nothing compared to routing the whole thing manually.

[vigilante397]

the auto route ain't bad, of course you have to go over it and adjust everything and fix a few things but that's nothing compared to routing the whole thing manually.

Good to know, I've never tried the autoroute on Diptrace, I shall have to give it a shot.

But seriously, if you use Diptrace and you don't have rullywow's libraries, you should definitely check them out.

[lars-musik]

+1 for diptrace the free version has a 300 hole capacity and two layers not 500 hole.

Well, if you mail them and ask nicely you'll get 500 holes. If you don't you are limited to 300. It's called non-profit (provided that you are!) and you'll find all the necessary information here:
http://diptrace.com/buy/non-profit/

EDIT: I just saw that I already posted that link.

[Ice-9]

+1 for diptrace the free version has a 300 hole capacity and two layers not 500 hole.

Well, if you mail them and ask nicely you'll get 500 holes. If you don't you are limited to 300. It's called non-profit (provided that you are!) and you'll find all the necessary information here:
http://diptrace.com/buy/non-profit/

EDIT: I just saw that I already posted that link.

Excellent, that is something new I learned then, I often use the free 300 hole download but had never noticed the free 500 hole version. Cheers.

[UKToecutter]

Another DipTrace fan here.
Can somebody point me to rullywow's libraries?

[davent]

No idea if Ben's linked them on this forum but they are here.

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=20516.msg200659#msg200659

[bluebunny]

Cool - thanks Ben (and Dave).  I think I need to give DipTrace a go.

[rullywowr]

Cool - thanks Ben (and Dave).  I think I need to give DipTrace a go.

Absolutely.  My pleasure. DT is the bomb.  I use it exclusively for all the PCBs on www.rullywow.com

[MetalGuy]

Many years ago when I first heard about auto routing I thought I would draw a schematic and the software will do the layout for me. Well in reality it just won't happen so the sooner you forget about that the better.

Not a very intuitive program. Definitely a learning curve but...great tool once you get the hang of it.

One very friendly advice to all PCB software beginners from somebody who tried all kind of PCB software: stay away from that piece of s..t at all cost! Just forget it even exists!

[karbomusic]

One very friendly advice to all PCB software beginners from somebody who tried all kind of PCB software: stay away from that piece of s..t at all cost! Just forget it even exists!

That's a bit of an unfair assessment. Better said horses for courses because I had no problem picking it up nor making the 100 or so PCBs I've designed and etched with it since and it was the first PCB type software I had ever touched. Of course like anything I want to be good at, I took the time to watch the tutorial videos instead of blindly clicking around.

[snap]

One very friendly advice to all PCB software beginners from somebody who tried all kind of PCB software: stay away from that piece of s..t at all cost! Just forget it even exists!

That's a bit of an unfair assessment. Better said horses for courses because I had no problem picking it up nor making the 100 or so PCBs I've designed and etched with it since and it was the first PCB type software I had ever touched. Of course like anything I want to be good at, I took the time to watch the tutorial videos instead of blindly clicking around.

is that: the 100 PCBs you designed, or is it: the 100 PCBs the autorouter designed?

the way I think MetalGuy meant it in his post, gets my applause.

[R.G.]

the way I think MetalGuy meant it in his post, gets my applause.

Software that just does what you want (or better, what you *meant* to want if you knew what you really wanted  ) is always gratifying.

The problem with getting PCB layouts from a schematic directly, with no other human tinkering, is that just running the traces to connect up everything that ought to be connected is perhaps the most trivial part of a PCB layout effort. Autorouter programs that will do that have existed since the late 70s.

The problem is what you get out when it's done. An autoroute worth waiting for depends on getting a great placement of all the parts so that a trace routing can complete, then on the placement being such that the signals don't do ugly things to each in the analog sense. So each net tends to need some information tagged onto it telling an autorouter which are power supply nets, ground nets, parallel bus nets, high analog impedance, low analog impedance, high/low currents, sharp fast edges or glacially slow audio... it goes on and on.

Good human routers have all this stuff tucked away in the backs of their heads because they've made the mistakes before. So the can place things well, almost by blind intuition, except it isn't blind, by any means.

Enter the auto-placer. Auto-placers take schematics and (very, very explicit!) descriptions of the physical shapes and pinout of the parts needed, and then (sometimes) place all the parts relative to each other so they can be routed.

Great as far as it goes, but how big is the board that results? No big trick to autoroute ten parts on a square meter. Getting it to fit into your box is harder.

Box?? It has to fit in the box? And which box, exactly? How did the autoplacer know what box you wanted? OK, have to tell the autoplacer the box size. Um... and where the controls go. And where the wires and jacks and LEDs and other off-PCB stuff goes to fit in the box... it gets out of hand pretty quickly.

Auto routers and auto placers and 3-d design programs keep getting better. Maybe someday.

By the way, this question comes up about once a year.   

[karbomusic]

is that: the 100 PCBs you designed, or is it: the 100 PCBs the autorouter designed?

Hand routed and designed by me other than my reference in my previous post - I don't auto route generally for these type projects as there is no way any auto router can know what I actually desire. Eagle wasn't hard to learn - maybe 2 hours of my life watching a tutorial and some hands-on time? Trivial compared to the payoff.

Eagle isn't the only choice, plenty of great choices, but that doesn't make it well you know... It just means it might not be for you

[MetalGuy]

It just means it might not be for you

Because of the steep learning curve definitely not for everyone especially for beginners.
For simple pedal layouts it's an overkill unless of course you're having fun learning new things and/or accept it as a challenge.
The job can be done with many other much more simple and intuitive software where exporting manufacturing files (if needed) is also available.
One feature that could be useful for DIY-ers is importing a PCB layout picture in the working field and drawing the PCB "on top" of it. It's available in Sprint Layout so you might want to check that one as well.

[davent]

^You can get freeware that will provide a 'ghosting' capability for use with any software. Have a piece on another computer, can't remember it's name but it worked well when it was needed.