Circuit Drawing Tips - Computer Based

[Synaptic Amps]

I've been spending a lot of time lately sitting at the ole' drafting table with pencil and paper working out circuit ideas. I like to look at circuit design as an evolutionary process progressing towards an end but never really final. On paper though, when I want to go back and make a change that often means starting back from scratch with a clean sheet of vellum. It gets me to thinking about all those nice computer drawn schematics I've been seeing online. Every time I see one of these pdf schematics I wonder how they were drawn. It sure would help to have the ability to drag and drop components around rather than start fresh each time. Does anyone have any tips on computer based circuit drawing?

[Steve Conner]

They are generally drawn with LTSpice or Eagle, AFAIK. Personally I just use notebooks full of scribbled circuits, even in my day job, and only do a CAD drawing when I need to show the circuit to someone else.

[Don Moose]

I've been using KiCAD for a couple of months, and it's pretty good - and FREE.

Works great for PC, fine on linux, setup on OS-X is a bit of a fiddle, but it does work.

[loudthud]

I've been using OrCad SDT since the late 80's. (It's what Weber uses.) I've got some cool macros and extensive libraries for tubes, switches and transformers. I'm still using the DOS version. I think they ruined it when they converted to a Windows interface. When working on a project, I print out one or two revisions a day to keep up with changes. I keep the printed copies and don't try to archive the computer files except at major milestones. I finally figured out how to get stuff into files that I can post as gifs. Weber uses the postscript driver which I have but it's on a 5-1/2 inch floppy and I don't have a working computer with that type of drive so I can copy it to a 3-1/2. I run it from a 100meg zip disc so I'm not violating the license agreement but still can move between computers.

I've been looking at the Hoffman board and they use Express over there. I installed it on my laptop and it doesn't look too bad. Still would like to find a decent tube library so I don't have to build one on my own. It seems to behave so far on an XP laptop. It's free.

http://www.expresspcb.com/

[soundmasterg]

I think they have an extensive library over there at Hoffman for that program too. I haven't checked into it yet but I recall reading something about it over there. You may ask around on that board about it.

Greg

[MattT]

I use VISIO but haven't learned the best way to convert them to a picture file. I've been told that if I could somehow .pdf the drawing it would look great (something called Cutepdf was mentioned but I haven't tried it out). Below is just saving a VISIO file as a .gif...see how it's a bit blurry? But the drawings look good when printed and saved 'correctly'.

There is really a 'box' around that PAB switch but for some reason when I .gif'd it...the box went away. I don't really go for perfection or try to make it pretty (obv). And there are some small errors in it...you can click on 'alternative form' and change the resistors to rectangles...change caps from polar/non-polar...etc. Those power tubes are supposed to be pentodes.

[macwanj]

Heres a pretty good component library for ExpressPCB.

[CarlZ]

To echo what Steve said, really the only use for computer based drawings is for capturing them once they're finalized. Then of course you've also got EDA software to try out quick and dirty test runs of ideas without blowing anything up. But now you're talking bout some long green unless you happen to find a cracked version someplace...but I would NEVER recommend anything like that! *cough*

If you're looking to just draw up schematics you might want to look into DeltaCad. It's a slick little 2D cad program that's crazy simple to learn, extremely light weight, and dirt cheap compared to autocad or some of the other ones. It'll also import and export dxf, dwg, windows bitmap and jpeg so you've got quite a few options for manipulation with other programs.

-Carl

[hasserl]

I just use Microsoft Paint and can do just about anything any of the schematic specific programs will do. It's very user friendly and best of all, it's already on your PC.

[Paul P]

It sure would help to have the ability to drag and drop components around rather than start fresh each time. Does anyone have any tips on computer based circuit drawing?

I can't imagine going back to doing things on paper, which I stopped doing
maybe 20 years ago. The ability to create parts from drawing primitives and
and then put together a library of parts that can be copied, moved around
and deleted at will is enormously time-saving. You can draw the parts
completely to scale so that your drawing represents a real-life circuit with
all the proper parts. Chassis and circuit layout is a snap and you can try
different configurations at will.

See the thread :

http://music-electronics-forum.com/s...ead.php?t=4997

in which I present some examples of the amp I'm working on.
Keep in mind that these examples are of pretty poor quality, having been
converted to bitmap images and resized down to a reasonable size. In
real life they are crystal clear (and the lines are a lot thinner, they don't
seem to have been down-sized with the rest of the drawing).

I now have a library with all my Mallory 150's and 160's and TVA Atoms,
potentiometers, transformers, etc, etc and can put together a new
circuit in minutes. Making changes to a drawing takes seconds. Once my
drawing is finalized it will just be a matter of doing the same out of real parts
with almost a photograph of the final product available for checking against.

You could still buy the program I use not too long ago (called Designer 7 in
its last version) and it came with another outstanding program that lets
you do the same thing in fully rendered 3-D but that's quite a bit more
work (I did an entire kitchen in 3-D a few years ago). Still, might be nice
for front panel knob layout work.



I can move anything around, even open a cupboard door if I want. Not
in real time, though. You have to regenerate a final image after a change
of view or part in the drawing

I just noticed that you can get this software in its most extensive form
"Graphics Suite 2" by Micrografx (which has Designer 7, the 3-D package,
image-editing software and a few other things) on ebay for 30$. I can't
vouch for it working on your computer but it works fine on my Windows XP
system. I've been using this program for 17 years now.

Oh, and you can of course also draw schematics, and here again it's
useful to create a library of standard symbols :



There's a 'snap-to-grid' mode that causes all the pieces to line up easily.

Paul P

[Paul P]

Well I hadn't played with my 3d program in quite a while and mentioning it
above gave me the urge to fire it up. It's a bit painful to use, not difficult
but tedious. Again you create parts and then can copy, move or group
them together to make composite parts.

Here is an example of what it can do, which took less than a couple of
hours to build the parts and place them in the right spots. This is a rough
estimate of the front of the chassis of the amp I'm building. The knobs are
made of one thin cylinder stuck on to of another cylinder which are then
grouped together and can be manipulated as a unit.Once the drawing is
put together you can then move the camera and lights around and take
pictures from different angles.






It's really a pretty neat program. You could go to the trouble of defining all
your electronic components in 3d and then assembling them onto circuit
boards and put those inside your chassis, but it would take forever and not
serve much purpose. If you could add some electronic simulation software
to each part you could turn the amp on and play your guitar through it .

Paul P

[Paul P]

Here's another example of what you can do with a drawing program. Suppose
you've built up the following drawing of a circuit board :

You can then remove all the components, which gives you :

(yes, I know, looks like spaghetti, but I had to move things around to be
able to cram them as close as possible for the board to fit in my chassis)

Now, remove all the jumpers that are underneath the board, represented
by the dotted lines :

This gives you what the board will look like from above.

Next, go back a step and remove all the solid lines to leave just the jumpers
underneath the board :

This isn't terribly useful so you flip it left to right (a single command in the
drawing program) and get :

Since these wires are now 'on top' (since we flipped the board over) we
select them all and tell the program to make them solid lines instead of
dotted :

This is what the board looks like from underneath.

The final step is to go back to the step where we had the wires showing
on top of the board and remove them all :

which leaves just the turrets (or eyelets). The drawing (which has been
drawn to scale) can now be printed out and used as a template for drilling
the holes in the board.

Paul P

[kldguitar]

you can use protel

I've been spending a lot of time lately sitting at the ole' drafting table with pencil and paper working out circuit ideas. I like to look at circuit design as an evolutionary process progressing towards an end but never really final. On paper though, when I want to go back and make a change that often means starting back from scratch with a clean sheet of vellum. It gets me to thinking about all those nice computer drawn schematics I've been seeing online. Every time I see one of these pdf schematics I wonder how they were drawn. It sure would help to have the ability to drag and drop components around rather than start fresh each time. Does anyone have any tips on computer based circuit drawing?

you can use protel or http://www.expresspcb.com
I used protel many years ago. But I did not use expresspcb, Expresspcb is free