Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

pc board design

Status
Not open for further replies.
my problem is pc board design i can not get this program from expresspcb to turn my schamatic to the layout form i need to see the traces on the board does anyone have a better program or better way or is there someone who can make the board for me from the print?
 
If you expect to just lay out a schematic and then presto....Expresspcb generates amagical board design you are mistaken.
It is a really good program and easy to use, but nothing short of a megabucks design package will do that.
Once the schematic is finished, open ExpressPCB, drag the corners around the screen to make your board size, insert the components and NAME them exactly as you did in the schematic, Link the pcb file to the schematic, and the program will highlight the netlist pins needed for the traces. Then just drag a connection from pin to pin and you are done.
It is a very intuitive program and the boards they make are top notch finish.
Dialtone
 
Ok thanks for the insight
Maybe you can help me then. I drag a line from the pins that come up blue to each other how do I get the line to the pins when they want to cross each other? If they cross each other doesnt that mean they are now electricaly common?
 
On the left side of the layout screen are the "operation" buttons. Their fucntions define wat you want to do, such as "place a trace" for example.
On the top of the layout screen are the board set up buttons or operational properties.
The default layout is for 2 sided boards.
When you place a component on the board, such as a dip16 connector, it is outlined in yellow. Yellow is the silkscreen layer color.
Red is used for the traces on the top of the board and green is used for traces on the bottom of the board..
To avoid overlapping traces on the same side of the board, simply select the layer color to use before placing a trace. If you want to connect an upper and lower trace together, select and place a "via hole" of the proper size, between an upper and lower trace.
For complex designs where your eyes may start playing tricks on you, you can temporarily hide any of the 3 colors by disabling its display using the buttons on the lower left of the panel.
Like anything else, this process requires some initial learing how to operate the program, but it is a quick learning process and 1 or 2 small designs will be sufficient to get the hang of it.

The rest of the trick to any good layout involves some artistic ability and foresight (such as where to place the chips) and you may find that from time to time you may need to change items on the schematic (such as which element to use on a multi-gate chip) that best suites the physical layouts on the board. This is especially true on trace intensive layouts such as complex parallel bus layouts.

Dialtone
 
So the way I get this design to work I m suppose to use both red and yellow traces one on each side of the board is ok and if i can not get to the other side of the board cause a yellow and a red trace are in my way i have to lay the parts differently?
 
Yellow is not a trace layer, but is used to signify a component outline on the silkscreen/solder mask layer. Red and green are used for actual conductor traces on the top or bottom of the board. Any red or green trace can cross a yellow silkscreen layer . Silkscreen layer is just a printed layer that is put on the solder mask after the actual board traces are manufactured, and is not even necessary or particulary desireable in a small prototype order.
Try to look it like a sandwich you made and placed in a plastic bag.
The bread slices would be the top and bottom trace layers, the meat would be the board itself, the bag would be the solder mask, and if you wrote on the bag indicating what was inside, that would be the silkscreen layer.
Dialtone
 
Here is a screenshot of a small portion of one of my layouts.

Dialtone
 

Attachments

  • screenshot_135.jpg
    screenshot_135.jpg
    110.4 KB · Views: 658
Thank you very much for all the help and ex you have been very helpful I now feel better prepared to tackle this board making problem. Thanks again.
 
Hey dialtone or anyone else with experience with the program that expresspcb uses and have the time to give my print and pc board layout is correct before i order them. If anyone could help I would be most thankful. If you can let me know and will email them or post them if i can get it to post.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top