Non-PCB layout designer tool? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: kalel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:11:04 pm
content: There might not be a specific tool for this, but if you're just connecting your circuit with wires (no PCB, protoboard, breadboard, or other things that make connections),is there any software in which you could design the circuit before connecting the real thing?The goal is just to have less to think about when doing the actual soldering and connecting, by following a pre-designed layout rather than a circuit diagram directly.If you do follow the circuit diagram and do not think about design and are a complete beginner, you might end up with something like myoscillator circuitthread, even though it works properly it's not pretty. Okay, I just wanted to make it work and the design really didn't matter but for anything more complicated, it would likely fail without a design, as especially if you are making something with more than just a few parts, it might get really difficult (especially for a beginner) to just connect and solder things while looking at the schematics rather than a design. One where you marked exactly which pin of the IC/LED/cap/inductor/diode/whatever you are using goes to what.Perhaps PCB circuit designer tools could be used for this and then wires used instead of the vias in the design? I have zero experience with them so I'm not sure if they can be used for such a purpose, or perhaps, if there's a more handy tool.For example, I mean projects like Alex does:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/first-oscillator-circuit-(555-led-flashing)/msg1229183/#msg1229183Or like the second project from Dana's document:https://1drv.ms/w/s!Al2JgiX7_qf0imH6fgNoCpiqDa3jBoth of those look awesome and maintainable, and while those specific examples might have been done with or without any layout design tool (well, we might find out from Alex), what kind of tool do you think would be able to help the most with such designs? If it's free, all the better.I guess someone could draw the layout in a vector tool like inkscape or such, but you don't get the presets for IC packages, so you would need to draw everything and even though no PCB gets made from that for this use - perhaps the sizes of things should still be right (so you know what size/kind of wire to use to connect).

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:26:38 pm
content: FYI, working on actual wood boards is where the term "breadboard" came from!But generically, we're talking point-to-point wiring.Anyway, what comes to mind is diagramming software like Visio (PC), OmniGraffle (Mac), and Calligra (Linux, etc.). You could just use regular shapes with magnetic "connectors" to diagrammatically lay out your design.If Inkscape has magnetic connections, then it would do, too.I wouldn't worry too much about the shapes having to look exactly like the real things.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:29:48 pm
content: One more app comes to mind: Fritzing. Its breadboard layout view works just fine even if you delete the breadboard itself. The problem with Fritzing is that it's buggy as hell. If you first enter the schematic in the schematic view, and then switch to the breadboard or PCB view to lay out a board, it ends up confused and adds connections to the schematic that shouldn't exist. So its DRC (design rule check, i.e. "does the layout match the schematic" checker), instead of helping you catch mistake, introduces its own...

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:31:41 pm
content: pencil with eraser (not ink) and paper or whiteboard and dry erase pensor chalk and chalkboard (for academic types)

author: kalel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:38:13 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on June 09, 2017, 01:29:48 pmI actually tried Fritzing a bit today. But without having much experience with similar tools (whatever they are), I considered all of the confusion to be my fault. Most probably was. But I did notice it doesn't work extremely fast. Perhaps it was written with HTML 5 or something similar for cross-platform compatibility. A problem with HTML 5 can be that sometimes it works even slower than Flash which it replaced for interactive apps.P.S. It might be quite useful for Arduino use however, since people can share both the designs and code. In fact, I saw some Fritzing screenshots on many instructable projects.P.P.S. No, it's "The Fritzing source code is written in C++ using the Qt-framework. " (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzing). We see Qt a lot these days for all kinds of projects, both commercial and scientific. It's also cross platform but it's properly compiled and should have a decent performance.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:46:31 pm
content: Wikipedia says it's C++ with Qt. (HTML5 needn't be slow; EasyEDA runs circles around Fritzing, and it's a true web app!)Fritzing is widely used in the maker community for breadboard layouts. But I've wasted so much time tracking down mistakes with it, mistakes that it turns out it had added! (Also, the breadboard editor is idiotic, insofar as it only allows one footprint for a component, even though it has multiple footprints in the PCB layout! So for example, you can't choose the length of a resistor in the breadboard view, even though that's one of the most natural things in the world in breadboarding.)But the fact that the bugs regarding imaginary connections showing up has existed foryearsand still hasn't been fixed, makes it too big a liability. I can't risk wasting even more time with a tool that is simply not trustworthy. I want to like Fritzing, but I can't trust it.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:50:08 pm
content: Quote from: kalel on June 09, 2017, 01:38:13 pmHeheh, you edited your post while I was replying.I don't know much about Qt, but I do know that lousy programmers can take a great platform and produce code on it that runs horribly.

author: kalel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 01:53:48 pm
content: I just want to say thanks, I'm not sure about the best solution yet, but this is a really supportive community. You get the feeling that you can ask anything without worrying it seems too stupid or too clever...well, not sure about the other (if it's possible).

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 02:13:38 pm
content: I think I'd just organize my schematic (or a copy of it) such that the components were in approximately the right places on a single page for a physical layout, along with changes to avoid hidden nets like VCC and GND. That would be good enough for me to do a build, in most cases.

author: Neomys Sapiens
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2017, 08:16:30 pm
content: The topic of layouts on perfboards (experimenter's PCBs with holes/pads or holes/strips) has been covered, so what remains is planning for terminal strips/tagboards (Lötleisten). In this case it might be helpful to use a CAE tool originally intended for switchboards (for example ECS-cad), as it allows to use special notations and symbols for continued wiring. Just number your connection points and treat them like a terminal strip, and the SW will show you a 'from/to' wire list.