Best software for PCB design ever - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Chris42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2020, 04:37:07 pm
content: So ...I was sorting my old emails from two semesters ago and I found this gem:Is it some ugly industrial art?No!This is PCB design of a DC-DC converter for a power devices class made in ...... Libre Office Calc.The best software for PCB design on this planet!How does this work?It takes a lot of ingenuity to design PCBs in a spreadsheet and the process requires some explanations.Here is the list of questions that came to my mind when I was mastering this marvelous piece of software:1) What the hell do those colors mean?The system is very simple and easy to remember:- Gray = PCB- White surrounded by gray = Trace.- White not surrounded by gray = Not PCB.- Green = Shorted traces.Then each trace gets it's own color according to the designers choice. Some colors mean some special things.I don't know what things. Manual is 1M pages long and has 100M references.2) Where are the holes on this board?White cells with thin black outline are the holes. They are quite easy to miss.If you miss such error, your design is incorrect and cannot be assembled.3) How do I even define component footprints in this hell?Each footprint is defined through manual edition of cell borders. Footprint borders are to be set to thick black.In order to move a component you have to undo all changes to cell borders and the redo them in another place.That encourages you to get it right the first time!4) How the hell do I connect things?First you create a netlist in a separate spreadsheet.It look's like this:Each row contains component lead names for a single net.Then on the board you type the name of each lead into a right cell to connect it to a specific trace.No net naming is possible. But why bother? You have colors for that!5) How do I even know that I connected everything?Once everything is drawn you run a special macro written in ancient runes (VBA or whatever the hell Libre Office runs)and pray that it works. Macro gives you error message whenever stuff on the board does not match stuff in the netlist.7) During macro execution my computer summoned Cthulhu!Ah yes, macros have some undefined behavior in them. Just follow the manual and everything will be fine next time.About Cthulhu.... well just call 112 or something.Pros and ConsPros:- You just passed the class!- From now on you will appreciate any CAD software. Or even designing directly on a piece of paper.Cons:- During the design process you will destroy a minimum of 3 keyboards. First one will be destroyed in an attack of rage that frequently occurs during the process of entering all nets.Then the second one will be destroyed during footprint placement. Then the third one will shatter when you will try to run a macro and you will get an error which will force you to move a couple of components.- You will also destroy at least one keyboard per each change in the layout.- You will likely have at least one mental breakdown during the design process.- You will realize that for the price of all those keyboards you destroyed, you could have bought a 1-year license for Altium.- You will try to drop this class but then you will realize that it is obligatory.- You will lose hope in humanity.- You will start building a spaceship to go to mars and be a potato farmer.I think the entire industry should adopt this as a new standard! This would make things so much easier for everybody (well apart from Cthulhu but this is just a detail.).What do you think about this?

author: Dave
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2020, 09:48:39 pm
content: What the everloving fuck?

author: ANTALIFE
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 12:15:56 am
content: Looks like a veroboard/breadboardBut even then, why tho ?_?

author: Chris42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 06:34:59 am
content: Quote from: ANTALIFE on October 08, 2020, 12:15:56 amI still sometimes ask myself this question. But I can't find any answer that would make sense.Good thing that my lab partner did most of the work in the spreadsheet. I just drawn all traces on a piece of paper and he did all the hard work transferring them to this CAS (Computer Aided Suffering) software.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 06:52:14 am
content: The why is easy i think:Excel, and similarly it's "clones" like Libre/Open Office Calc, are powerful pieces of software, that were taught at schools 25 years ago. At least my school did this, alongside with Microsoft Word.Learning a proper PCB CAD software is even tougher, and mostly has to be done on your own. And many people do not like to learn something new.And if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nailThat is why Excel is so damn common, even in large companies that would have the resources to use better tools. Everyone thinks they can use it :pThat is why the UK lost over 16.000 Corona Tracking datapoints: They used theColumnsof an Excel sheet gather peoples information.

author: Chris42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 07:05:37 am
content: Quote from: Ranayna on October 08, 2020, 06:52:14 amThen why not just use a pencil and a piece of paper? That would be like 100 times easier and would take less time.Just print the outline of the prototype board, draw traces with a pencil. Then draw the component footprints with a ruler and you are done. If you need to change something,use rubber to erase the part of the design and redraw it in a different place. It still sucks compared to Eagle or Altium but at least you are not manually editing cell borders and doing other stupid things that this system requires.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 07:06:11 am
content: Cmon, KiCad is not that hard to use.

author: S. Petrukhin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 07:32:00 am
content: Paint is our everything!

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 12:17:55 pm
content: Quote from: Ranayna on October 08, 2020, 06:52:14 amWhatever the merits of using Excel, they lost the data due to not having a backup or even working in a separate copy to the original... showing a lack of even the most elementary computer skills and data hygiene habits! Would you trust a person like that to walk your dog?

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 01:33:12 pm
content: Backups or multiple copies of the same document would not have helped them if i have understood their issue correctly.They used an automated process to fill that excel sheet with data from various sources. Sounds good and fineBut their process did not validate if the data was actually added to the document and apparently did little to no errorchecking. So they did not notice when the excel document hit the column limit.You can backup as many copies of the document as you want at this point, it will not help.I guess someone at some point wondered why there were no new entriesAs far as i know, there was no actual data loss. This excel sheet was used for contact tracking and notifications, which are obviously time sensitive.Regarding on "Why not pen and paper?". This seems to be a recent happening. What modern student still carries pen and paper?I know thats likely hyperbole, at least i hope so...

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 04:32:38 pm
content: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000n4vqThey used excel as a database because they are a bunch of idiots and yes the file format (the old excel file version of course) could not handle the data. The noticed at some point that no new cases had been recorded....................

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 04:36:05 pm
content: Quote from: Ranayna on October 08, 2020, 01:33:12 pmNot sure I understand what you mean. At our company, the IT department can bring back any version of any file, going back years if necessary? They will swear at you a lot while doing it, of course... and you will be forced to go to an IT re-education training camp.... but still...

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 04:38:09 pm
content: Quote from: SilverSolder on October 08, 2020, 04:36:05 pmThey tried to feed into excel more data than the sheet would take, it simply ignored the excess data. They would never have had anything to backup, the data was entered, but never saved.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 04:44:44 pm
content: Pretty poor design from Microsoft, that Excel lets you enter more rows than it can save... it should have put a stop to that with an error message...That said, the actual file size limit of an Excel spreadsheet is 2 GB?...and Excel supports Autosave every 10 mins or whatever?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 04:54:26 pm
content: You are talking about the makers of some of the worse software on earth right? They don't have to care. No one buys Microsoft software because they want to but because they have to!

author: Wilksey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2020, 05:03:26 pm
content: You don't need to use the "Excel" program to read and write xsl/xslx files, it could be done pro grammatically, or use something like a VBA macro, and i they have the "ON ERROR RESUME NEXT" nugget in the code then it's a given, Excel won't as far as I know let you go above the number of rows it supports, hence my thinking that they did not use excel as front end just the back end.You should be using something at least like EasyEDA / KiCAD to produce a decent project that can organise your files (schematic / pcb / libs) and generate Gerbers, it's just not worth making them at home anymore.Why make it hard for yourself?

author: apurvdate
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2020, 06:30:51 am
content: I once met a guy who used to work in local small scale fab & was using CorelDraw for layout.He said adjusting individual trace width becomes so easy and one can draw curved tracks also.No gerber export but directly as *.ps file & film printing.

author: perieanuo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2020, 06:57:06 am
content: Quote from: apurvdate on October 09, 2020, 06:30:51 amyep, those 'software' guys think they can figure out everything. i hate when I have to explain to one of those entities the hardware cannot be driven with excel vba'ssomeone said excel not reporting data entry exceeding his capabilities, I think the 'software analist' didn't give a f...ck about monitoring data integritywell, most of the time best software creators are the hardware guys

author: E-Design
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2020, 12:01:13 pm
content: I used to know I guy who used Microsoft Word for layout - we called it word-cad. He was the only adopter.Microsoft Word -let that sink in. Absolutely terrifying.

author: madengr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 12, 2020, 03:04:43 am
content: 20+ years ago, there was a harmonic balance simulator written in Excel. Pretty crazy.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2020, 06:11:44 am
content: Quote from: perieanuo on October 09, 2020, 06:57:06 amI have Excel sheet that does EMI testing by running a spectrum analyzer via SCPI.Yes it is as crappy as you might think. It was only done because i needed a quick way to pull data from the spectrum analyzer and someone made a Excel VBA macro for it. So then i also added a button to reconfigure the spectrum analyzer for various tests. Then also moving data round manually became annoying, so i added some fancy graphs in driven by macros. The plan was to eventually take some time and rewrite the whole thing in C# or something...Well you know what they say about the permanence of temporary solutions that work... yeah years later its still run by an Excel sheet that seams to only work correctly in a few specific versions of Office. I deeply regret creating this monster and unleashing it upon the world.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 12, 2020, 06:40:20 am
content: We have the same at work, our sub contractor used excel as a visual control input which was the easiest way to do it at the time as otherwise it was type stuff into a terminal window. It was quite clever although we plan to move on from that.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2020, 02:26:49 pm
content: The whole idea with Excel and VBA is that non-professionals should have an accessible way to make workable computer programs on Windows PCs.If it works reliably and solves its intended purpose... it is an appropriate solution, in my view.The opposite end of the "knock it up in Excel" spectrum is to gild the lily and write applications in C++ or other professional level languages, which then requires a professional programmer to understand your specification, write, alter, and maintain the code afterwards. That isn't necessarily cost efficient in all circumstances, to put it mildly!

author: srb1954
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 04:58:20 am
content: Quote from: E-Design on October 09, 2020, 12:01:13 pmMicrosoft Word is causes considerable frustration even when used for its intended purpose of word processing.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 05:15:00 am
content: Quote from: srb1954 on October 13, 2020, 04:58:20 amOffice PowerPoint is also a popular do it all tool for a lot of people. Especially in business environments.They will crop and print pictures in it. Anytime they have to draw anything digitally they will do it that, if its something technical? Who cares now its PowerCAD! At where i work it actually went the opposite way. People drawing diagrams and manuals in AltiumDesigner because its schematic editor is kind of a vector drawing tool and its better than MS Word.But i guess a lot of that comes from vector drawing software not being very widely spread, so most people only know the shapes objects in MS Office.I like to use CorelDraw because i been using it for a long time. But now i use that even for things that it was probably never intended to do.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 06:31:23 am
content: Quote from: srb1954 on October 13, 2020, 04:58:20 amMS Word is cause for frustration when used for any purpose. I thought I would switch from LO writer to MS word for my course work as I should be fluent in what is sadly the industry standard. Despite following the instructions for the math input copying their example it still failed to work, back to LO writer it is.

author: Chris42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 09:17:31 am
content: I think that the problem with VBA is that it is still taught in schools.It is one of the worst programming languages currently in use and yet people still write new code in it because they don't know any better. Nowadays we have much better languages that are simpler to learn than VBA.Those languages have IDEs that don't yell at you if you make a typo, rich ecosystems, consistent syntax, detailed documentation. Just to name some improvements.Also in VBA you still need to learn how to write simple programs so why not write them in some language that does not have 3 ways of defining variables, functions that are broken in some obscure way depending on the version of excel and other unexpected behaviour.Personally for tasks like pulling data out of some instrument I use Python.It took me 1h and 60 lines of code to write a program that connects to LRC meter, configures it, records data and displays them on a plot. In VBA that would be 10h of doing some weird hacks just to establish a connection, nevermind parse a message.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 10:30:18 am
content: Quote from: SilverSolder on October 08, 2020, 04:44:44 pmWho says there wasn't an error message? Someone has to read it for it to be useful. Part of the issue seems to have been a lack of error checking. It's a surprisingly common issue.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 10:33:21 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 13, 2020, 10:30:18 amI think the problem is that they were not manually entering the data. Apparently one reason to use the old file format is that it supports scripting. I don't know enough about excel (ask Matt Parker) to say anything for sure but I suspect that they were not really using excel but the file format.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2020, 11:22:48 am
content: Quote from: Chris42 on October 13, 2020, 09:17:31 amThere are still plenty of worse languages than VB. Most of the issue in VB is that it drags on a lot of legacy crap. But it is a pretty simple easy to learn language that doesn't make it too easy to shoot yourself in the foot. Interfacing to SCPI instruments is no hack at all, just a regular machine code DLL import of the IVI library like all other languages.Python also has quite a few things that will make some programmers raise pitchforks against it (like just declaring things on the fly, adding members to objects on the fly, lack of firm data types, the way mutable and imutable things behave very differently, its classically interpreted making it about as fast as molasses, the way libraries are installed and loaded, using invisible whitespace to group statements etc..). Its just another scripting language that can be as powerful as you want it to be. Tho in my opinion it is better suited for quickly throwing things together simply because you can quickly pip install a library to do pretty much every possible thing under the sun. Hence it is my goto way of quickly automating something.What sucks is the Excel API that you are forced to use in order to do anything useful in interaction with Excel. Just like Excel itself it is a huge legacy clusterfuck that does things in the most non logical of ways. Even if you had a python flavor of VBA you would still get hit in the face by this horrible API.Excel is actually a pretty good tool for playing around with small data sets, but i would never pay sticker price for MS Office due to the overall bad quality of the software.