DIY Layout Creator - software for easy drawing PCB, vero and perfboard layouts

[skiraly017]

By the way, it's been a while since someone recommended feature/component. C'mon guys 

Came across these two needs while doing a layout the other day...radial electrolytics and tranny sockets (the round ones).

[bancika]

ok for radial electros, but why sockets? I mean, putting transistor is sufficient. With both transistor and socket it will look overcrowded.
Thanks 

[Roobin]

Could you possibly do the downlaod everything package on your site? It's just easier.

[bancika]

yeah, but
a) I have very slow connection and sending new package each day takes some time
b) then you couldn't see ads on my site, wouldn't ya :icon_wink:I've got to make a living
Cheers

[skiraly017]

ok for radial electros, but why sockets? I mean, putting transistor is sufficient. With both transistor and socket it will look overcrowded.
Thanks 

Because it would be uselful for spacing purposes when trying to lay out a PCB. I know how much room resistors, cap, etc. need. Not all transistors should be soldered in. I'm working on a Tone Bender clone. The trannies are $16 for a matched set from Small Bear, not something you want to accidentally ruin with too much heat from a soldering iron. The round sockets take up more space than a single transistor does. Just suggesting an idea.

[Dragonfly]

Bancika...

I don't know if his has been "previously mentioned", but here goes....

you seem to have included "almost" everything to do a complete layout, including wiring...you have switches, jacks, pots, wires....how about including batteries and maybe power jacks, so that complete wiring layouts can be made ?

anyway, great program...

AC

[bancika]

skiraly017, I'll consider it!
Dragonfly, yeah, I was also thinking about them...will be added, sooner or later
Thanks

[RLBJR65]

I've never seen and inductor live. Can you give me more info, pin number and spacing, ect

I have 1 or 2 laying around I'll take a look.

RB

[scaesic]

hello!

i dont know if there's a way to do this, but how about if you have a wire attached to something offboard like a jack, and then you move the jack, make it so the wire is fixed to the jack instead of just fixed to the grid point.

also, it could automatically detect when a wire end is on the baord and add a solder pad to it automatically?

[bancika]

for first thing, it would make whole thing even more complicated than it is. I'd have to add another relation to file system
As for second one, sure. I can make it create pad when wire is on board.
Cheers

[para]

let me say first, thank you very very much for all the hard work you've put into this soft, and for making it free. i've been using it quite a bit lately. you had asked for suggestions and i have some things i would like to see added but i just got the newest version, so some things might have already been addressed


1: add a "save as" option - so you can make some changes and save a newer version with a different name and not have to overwrite the source (i just copy the source file now and rename it, but its still a bit of a hassle)

2: have a copy component option for when you have ten 0.1uf caps and you don't want to type all that out over and over. oh and a "control-c" "control-v" too

3: make the pots and jacks smaller so they don't take up so much real-estate

4: add a few more wire shapes to keep it clean looking with full boards

5: someone already said to make traces work on the perfboard and i would like to see this too.

6: drag and drop everything (please please please please please please please ) someone else already asked for a box selection tool too, that would be amazing

7: when selecting more then one thing right now it automatically selects the entire category its in, and then all of those components move or are deleted too ( like clicking on a resistor and jumper while holding control will actually select all of the resistors and jumpers and they will all move or be deleted. please fix this.

8: it would be awesome to be able to open two or more separate layouts at once and copy out parts of one to paste into the other or combine them together with one click. like an "open into" option so you can build a bunch of little things, like a pre amp that you end up using in a lot of your designs, and just add it instead of having to do another layout every time. maybe have it work sort of like layers in photoshop. then have a "merge down" or "flatten" option once its in the right location and you have made any changes to get them to fit together.

9: use the keyboards arrow keys to move components instead of just clicking the arrows

10: right click to select doesn't work about 50% of time, especially with more components on the board. also maybe make the footprint a little bit bigger for the jumpers and thin things too, so you don't have to be so precise with your curser (i run my monitors at a really high rez so one pixel width is pretty small on the screens)

11: and the biggest thing of all is that it is incredibly slow after you get 20 or so components on the board. i exceed this very fast and it gets excruciating (like pron on a 14.4). i run a 3g P3 with 1g of ram and i can run like 80 stereo audio tracks, plugins, and softsysnths at once with no glitching, so having this take literally 20 seconds to select one component just to move it one hole to the right is kind of crazy to me. can you please explain why this is happening and what i can do to help it. i have a lot of big projects coming up. anything i can do to help please just ask me. maybe dropping the rez on the component images would help a bit. i'll take speed over beauty any day if thats the case. maybe start running vector?

12: also at a certain point when building big layouts, the program will give me an error and start deleting components until the board is empty. i forgot to write down what the actually error is. i think it had something to do with ram. it obviously didn't do anything to the source so i just endtask and reload, but i think this might the source of the speed issue too. i think the ram handling is probably something you should dig into. i think its not clearing out its old storage use or something so it just keeps adding and adding but never cleaning. i wish i knew enough to give you a hand, but this is way over my head.


thanks again for making this. i hope i didn't come off as being too negative, that wasn't my intention at all. i love this app and i would just like to see it grow.



thanks again,
steven

[zpyder]

2: have a copy component option for when you have ten 0.1uf caps and you don't want to type all that out over and over. oh and a "control-c" "control-v" too

I'll second that...

6: drag and drop everything

this would be SWEET...

7: when selecting more then one thing right now it automatically selects the entire category its in, and then all of those components move or are deleted too ( like clicking on a resistor and jumper while holding control will actually select all of the resistors and jumpers and they will all move or be deleted. please fix this.

I'll confirm this - it seems to be an error.  More accurately, if you are selecting multiple components by holding ctrl and right-clicking them ON THE BOARD, as soon as you select your second resistor/cap/whatever, the entire category heading is selected and if you press delete, ALL of them are deleted.  However, if you hold ctrl and select multiple whatever on the COMPONENT LIST at right, it does NOT do this.  Please fix...

10: right click to select doesn't work about 50% of time, especially with more components on the board.

yes, another bug.  I've noticed two problems - 1) I usually have to right-click a component TWICE to get the menu to drop down... not sure why.  I'd say 85-90% os the time it takes two clicks.  2) Sometimes the program seems to stop responding to right clicks alltogether... this is bizarre and I don't know why, but it's super frustrating trying to delete a single trace when the program won't recognize your right clicks.  I can't tell if this is UE or what, but it seems that when it starts not working, NOTHING can be selected...

11: and the biggest thing of all is that it is incredibly slow after you get 20 or so components on the board.

I've also had this problem and is rather frustrating... this may be a complicated one


cheers!
zpyder

[bancika]

Hi,
1) it exists, look at the menu at the bottom of screen
2) I'll try
3) It's important to keep things sized as they are. If I shrink pots and someone wants to use them directly on board it could screw up things...pin spacing is important, but if I keep pin spacing and shrink pot "body" it will look silly
4) already exists, right click on wire and select "change shape", if you need greater angle just use two or more wires connected together
5) ok
6) I know but it's not an easy thing to do...will try it
7) will look
it's slow enough with one layout, more layouts at the same time would make a mess
9) will think about it
10) ok. zpyder, you need to click twice but it's by intention. One click selects compoent, second one opens popup menu. If component is already selected you get popu imediately. It would be pain in the butt if you try to select more components and get popup menu each time.
11) everything is vector drawn. the problems are:
a) each time something is changed I need to draw whole layout
b) components are transparent, it takes a lot of cpu time to make something transparent
c) because of right click selection I need to have bitmap hidden inside memory which is the same size as layout which shows placement of component (component footprints are coloured with different colors so I can know which component is at position X,Y)
d) I use standard windows drawing routines (TCanvas) which are painfully slow, I plan to move to graphic32 components which are very fast but I don't have time for it because it's a major operation

Thanks for suggestions, program will get better thanks to you guys (partialy) 
Cheers

[para]

1: cool I should have checked

3: I don't care if it looks silly, I want the space. And I never use 24mm pots anyway. I use 16mm or 8mm which are way smaller,

4: no I wanted more shapes, like a 10 different shapes instead of 2 and adding more components slows things down.

6: drag and drop will make the world a better place i promise !!!!!

10: on top of the clicking twice its still doesn't work all the time, some components will simply never select unless you go to the explorer view and click on something else, then click back on the one you want. the pop up is cool with two clicks when it does work

11: oh right transparency does take a lot of cpu I forgot about that. you should stop using it. the only thing that needs to be see through is the ic, right? and with that you can just use a colored/gray outline for it and leave the center empty for cuts. i assume you want things transparent so you can see the cut tracks and stuff when setting up to make the board. but if you instead make an option to render the board with the traces and cuts, but no components and then have it flip so its just a mirror image of the board alone (the way it should be), it would be better for everyone ( all in one click "render board image"). so we don't have to reverse it in our head when cutting stripboard and stuff. and the option to hit the spacebar and have everything go clear doesn't work right for me anyway. whenever i hit it, it will stay clear and never go back to normal, i have to close and restart. so i don't use it anyway.

any corners you have to cut to get this to run faster is expectable to me. pretty and silly done mean anything. just understand that. speed should always be #1 on the list.

if you had to say which one of the 4 things you listed was the biggest cpu hog what would it be?


And just so you know I would be willing to pay for this software once the speed issue gets resolved, so keep that in mind. Like $5-10 or more to start from everyone that uses it, to keep getting more improvements would add up quick. obviously free is nice but i having this app running fast is worth $ to me. and you can still have a simple free version too.

anyone else feel this way? or should just i shut up


again thanks for making such a great app! and letting me make suggestions at all


steven

[bancika]

3: Those pots take onlt 12.5mm of space, grid spacing is 2.54mm
4: every time you click change shape you'll get new one, there are over 2 bilion of possible combinations. Changing shape just sets new random 32bit number which determines curve shape
10: I'm trying to replicate that but can't, damn thing works nice here
11: I tried removin transparency but improvement was only about 20%. Not worth it.
The most limiting thing is that I work all manualy using TCanvas. Graphic32 class would make it faster at least few times. I've seen some animation demos which use it and they were very fast. Like I said, it's my wish for a long time to make a transition to G32 but it will take major source code facelift to do that. I have faculty, my DIY projects, other commercial software I work on, playing guitar, very time-consuming girlfriend so it's hard to find time for everything.

As for paying stuff, program will remain free, but you are welcome to make either money either parts donation. RLBJR65 sent a bag full of great stuff (trannies, IC's) and pete from Sustainer thread sent me a spool of wire for my sustainer(s). If I get time to improve program I wouldn't separate two versions, that's for sure

By the way, I fixed that error with selection when selecting component would select whole group and I made traces and pads available in perfboard. Also, I think I made slight improvement in speed, but not more than 10%, without sacrifising anything.

Cheers

[zpyder]

11: oh right transparency does take a lot of cpu I forgot about that. you should stop using it. the only thing that needs to be see through is the ic, right?

11: I tried removin transparency but improvement was only about 20%. Not worth it.

I would second that transparency is not critical.  With size ten traces you can still see them under passive components.  IC's, trannies, and anything else that might be large should remain transparent on just outlines, but everything else can just use large traces underneath.  20% improvement in speed may not seem worth it, but every little bit counts.  I would love to see the G32 gfx when you get the time to utilize it.

thanks!
zpyder

[para]

very cool did you post the new version up on your site yet?

"there are over 2 billion of possible combinations" i only ever get 2 different shapes? then after 2 it just stays that shape i can't even get the first shape back? maybe you already fixed it? i'll check later

20% is a lot if added to the 10% you said you added. to me it would be worth it. maybe send me the version with no trans?

as for replicating? you will probably have to use layouts with a ton of junk like mine i guess : )

the pot size was just a little thing it doesn't really matter, when i have stuff with 5 or more pots i just run the wire to a little "text" saying the pot value and don't even put in a pot image. i do a lot of synth module stuff and things with a lot of controls so that space gets used up very fast. the average pedal maker won't care about that as much.

do you have a paypal account to make a donation to? or maybe you want a free shirt: http://suchaturnon.com/  if you pay for the shipping?



ok i'm shutting up now i have work to do, your the best,

steven

[markm]

Just a quick question,
Is it really necessary to show the pots?
All I do is label the pads and add notes at the bottom of the parts list as to what the pot value is.
Make it real easy

[bancika]

If you don't show pots you don't need pot component at all

[MikeH]

Something that occurred to me:  It would be nice to have a ruler option for rendering pcb images, so that you could make sure the scale is correct.