Hi After the last two videos on Uh Kead, they were quite popular. People seem to like this uh First Impressions type thing and I had many people ask if I could do um other packages as well. so I thought I'd give Uh Dip Trace a try I've heard uh, good things about it people. uh, complain about how crap Eagle is to use and say how n and they're saying how nice dip Trace is to use.

Well um, let's give it a go shall we? I've download it already and I've downloaded the uh freeware version which is um, all programs and libraries a 300 pin limit. uh, nonprofit use only so very similar to Eagle and it's a non uh, you can. You can't use it for a profit purpose. maybe for small, uh, hobby, uh, purposes.

You can sell a few boards, but apart from that, it's a 300 pin limit instead of the size limitation on Eagle And um, so this is a commercial package just like Eagle, so uh, don't complain. It's not open source and uh, here are the various options. They basically uh, limit you by the number of pins and it ranges anywhere from 75 bucks to convert the 300 pin version up to 695 bucks for the unlimited pins. Um, to give you an idea of number of pins, my new Uh power supply board.

it's about 400 odd pins so to do that board would require dip Trace light there at $145 that through hole board I Don't think it makes any differentiation between uh through hole and uh surface mount. so um I don't think you can get away with it by just doing all your designs surface mount. Anyway, let's get on to it. This is a First Impressions video.

It's not a tutorial. This is the first time I've ever used this program and I've already downloaded it. so I won't waste your time. and I've loaded it up and this is the first time I've used it.

Neat little box here. it looks like um, separate modules for this for the schematic, the PCB the component editor, and the patent editor. That makes sense. Patent editor is footprint editor of course.

So let's jump straight into schematic. capture. What do we got down here? Please select the preferred direct 3D Yeah, that'll do whatever. I'm happy with that.

Okay, it's opened full screen, so let me, uh, let me resize it here for you dip. Trace Tutorial: Oh, they've got got uh. various. They've got uh.

tutorials? um guided video tours. They got a forum. Excellent. Okay, so this is the schematic editor.

Let's take a look at what we have here. I Don't think as per uh keycard I Don't think everything's going to fit on the screen here, but uh, let's take a look at what we've got. We've got a layout area for the schematic. Um, and well.

let's let's choose something. Can we just double click on that? We can? There we go. How we're placing a, uh placing a battery? so that is that. Every part? No, sorry, that's looks like just batteries.

How do we change the category of maybe the screen has to go bigger? No, it's not that okay. Let me go back up here and let let's try. Uh oh. Here we go Here we go.

That's obvious. There's all the different libraries I Guess Agilant Algro Atmail. Let's go into the Atmail library. Everyone wants to see that.

and oh no. Atmail Library. And here are all of the Atmail parts. I Think they claim, um, quite an extensive Uh library.

but there's an 18. Mega Let's you double click on that and you place it too easy. and it looks like it is a Um A. Looks like it does have a grid based system.

I'm not sure how you change the grid. You could probably go up here to Tools: Component Editor: What have we got? Let's have a look. Objects: Place Components: Circuit can place wire buses, bus connectors so it supports buses. It supports hierarchies.

Uh, classes. Neat. Place Table: What's a place table? Let's have a look? No idea. Uh.

Bill of Materials: Excellent place. Picture: Okay, so we can place an image on our schematic. That's good I Hope we can do the same thing on the PCB That would be excellent drawing properties. Uh, haven't got into view display.

Origin: You can set where the origin is. Do you want the Grid on or off grid size? There we go. 0.1 in zoom in I'm to zoom in and out. I'm just using the uh Mouse scroll wheel and uh, that seems to work fairly well.

How do I pan can I pan? Ah, right. Click there we go. hold down the right Mouse button and pan around. Brilliant, That's what.

I that's what key CAD didn't have and I sort of. That's to me. that's the most intuitive way to do it. and I really like that.

So very happy with that. And if we double click on the item now Place table now I'm still in that table mode. Oops, cancel what have I done? Okay I've pressed escape a couple of times and it looks like I'm in the it seems to highlight that part when I hover over it. Maybe that's like if you double click, that's the object that you're going to do.

Um, that you're going to actually act upon. So uh, uh. I don't like the fact that that Library there shows the full path. I like it when it actually just shows the name.

Um, it should get rid of all the program files, x86 and all that sort of rubbish. So anyway, this is our component property. uh, marking, show, type, reference designators justifying what else we got here. We got a value, the type of the part, and we can attach a pattern.

We can attach a PCB footprint right here. So update component I Assume that means update the component from the current library on your schematic. That's good. So oh, that's nice.

We attach our footprint I Can't make that dialogue box any bigger. can't drag that so it looks like we fixed to that size there. but uh, patent part new one. Okay, so it's already.

hang on. We've already got a an attached pattern. It doesn't tell us I don't know what those lines there are attached pattern to our device here. So it's already chosen this package because we chose it from the library.

So I would assume that it already had that Plcc 44 package attached to it. So how do we choose another one? Update Component No. I Don't see an easy way to change the attached pattern or the footprint. Current component: similar component types apply to.

There's that graphic again. I Don't know what that means. so well, little bit confused by that. anyway.

Let's uh, go in there. Does it allow you to 3D View The component. Doesn't look like it just shows you the pattern. It's a little bit limiting might have.

We'll have have to go back to that one. So let's um. okay. we've easily placed a component from our library.

Our libraries are just along there. I Rather like that, that works fairly well. What have we got? we've got: Place Wire Place Bus Dirt Edit mode Can we do like a is there a help type thing? A question mark? no H for help? no uh, what else we got Place Hierarchy or connector Boom Object can be. This object can be placed into hierarchial sheets only.

Okay, so you got to edit that to get a hierarchial sheet. We could muck around with this, but we're probably better off. Uh. Place Table Oh, there we go.

Okay, right. it's actually a table. That's neat. I Like that you don't have to draw many times.

I've drawn tables in schematics just so you know, like, um, uh, if something something has to be set by a dip switch or something on your product, you put it in your schematic there and you can just label things rather easily. I Rather like that, it's um, not part of the functionality of the circuit. it's just an annotation, uh, type thing. but that's that's quite nice.

And you can insert images. Oh, you can draw a polygon too. Neat. Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Nice.

Okay, I like it. Um. I Like a good schematic header that has lots of annotation capability. allows to draw boxes and do you know, boxes around things and shaded and all that sort of stuff.

And to do really nice annotation of your schematic That's valuable I Think so. Um, we're probably better off though. Loading an existing example file, let's see what they got. Well, let's actually have a look at the export.

Let's see what they got. You can export to a Dip Trace Asy file dxf pcad you can export the Nets net list into various Uh formats and including Protel there and a Spice Net list so but no. uh, print to PDF Actually so let's I saw a recovery options. Okay, so you can recover it I don't know, Is it going to crash that often that you have to recover? Go figure.

Um, there's back anit tap feature. There's convert to PCB which is push through I assume push through to PCB and the schematic in uh uh. there we go. There's our pin count.

Limit Pins 46 pins of 300, uh, maximum. So far. So there you go. Um, it's it.

tells you exactly where the limit is going to be and it'll be interesting to see where the limit is actually on the schematic or on the PCB or both. Um, yeah, that'll be interesting to see. anyway. let's I think we should open.

Do you want to save changes n let's ditch that. Examples There we go: I Like that. Which one? which one looks good. Quick start DCH is the file extension.

by the looks of it. let's do quick start. What does that give us? let's have a look here. Once again, they've used this.

oh that took a while to redraw there. that takes a bit to bit slow to redraw but panning really quick. panning super quick I like that I Love just being able to pan around my schematic. It's brilliant.

So to connect two pins oh this is like a this is like a tutorial on how to to Define titles and sheets yada yada yada. so it's actually explaining. It's sort of almost a step-by-step guide of how to do things, so that's rather interesting. Oh no.

I'm me I'm still in place. Okay that? Look Ah That's nice. It highlights individual pins and can we edit that pin? No, we can't. It's automatically drawn a wire pin name, not connected pin properties.

There we go Bang! Undefine passive input output. so that's that's all your design rule. Uh, checking stuff. At the schematic level, you can set them as uh, Power pins and inputs or outputs or passive or whatever you like.

That's excellent. Selected: Parts Yeah, that looks good. I Like it. You can just edit your PIN directly on the schematic.

It doesn't force you to go back into your library and update the part, so that's a better, more, the better, more formal way to do it. But sometimes you just want to. don't dick around the libraries. Just edit that one pin in your schematic so it looks like it allows you to do that.

Nice and Design manager. It shows you all your pins for that particular. For these particular Parts it shows you what devices you've got in this design which is rather neat. Hey, it shows like U10 Why is it showing U5 as plus 5 volts? Oh okay, because it is actually labeled u5 There you go.

Go figure. Don't really like that Example: Um, that's not good. That's not too good. A stable flip-flop.

There we go. that'll do. Uh, the template's rather large. Not sure what the not sure what's going on with the template there.

What if we go file new? Oh there we go. We just did file new and it gave us this tiny template by default. That's hilarious. Oh boy, let's go in.

and maybe there's there's got to be like options for that sort of stuff, surely. Uh, Reference Designator Renumbering Good. So you can renumber your entire schematic? That's good. Component Editor: Uh, Patent Editor Library Update edit: Library We'll go into that later.

Definitely. ERC I Like the menus, they're categorized into objects. What do you want to do? You want to place your components? You want to place images. You want to place tables, things like that.

Then you've got verification, which is a separate menu which is your design. real checkin and your hierarchy will checkin. Then you've got a separate Library function and tools. I Rather like the, uh, neat organization of those options, that's rather good.

customize grid. There we go. Let's say it's 0.1 in Grid that doesn't look like a 0.1 in Grid to me. Not sure what's going on there.

Display origin. Where is our origin? By the way, define origin as by Mouse We shouldn't be mucking around with the origin stuff. It doesn't really matter. Um, press F1 to display origin.

Ah, there you there, It is all right, No problem. So if we do file New Again By default, our origin looks like it's going to be down the bottom and well, jeez, they. I need a real I Need a better, more complicated example than than this, maybe schematic one? What's this? Ah, here we go. Now we're talking excellent, excellent example.

So let's try some of the others. schematic Z Six: Oh, let's go. Oh, there we go. Now we're talking is that within the boundaries of our 300 pin limit? Where was that? Uh, where was that option to give us our uh I forget where it gives you the pin count? Geez, I forget already it was here somewhere.

Info: no view. Jeez, where was it? Come on. I know you're probably banging the table at home if you've used this or you remember where it was. but uh, bug it if I can.

Anyway, let's see. well, it's allowed us to load in that design. So I'm presuming that's under 300 uh pins. which is pretty good Now see I don't like that.

Zoom in and it and it's all fuzzy for a second until it redraws. That's a bit. that's a bit dodgy. Um, it's all all sort of like very one color, sort of monochrome 1980s is.

It would have been nice if the Nets were say a different color. Uh, for example, so I'm in the edit mode here. presumably no. I can't edit that net label.

It's part of a bus hierarchy. net list for the bus. There we go. Um, but I can't actually change that particular net name.

It's part of a bus. Then again, this schematic doesn't really. You doesn't really rely on Nets to go anywhere. It's just.

uh. it's all very wiik. So anyway, let's see. let's go into the uh Component editor, shall we? What else that we place? Component? find, component, Define origin.

Yeah, we've looked at most of the stuff along there. most of the buttons. it's all pretty obvious. So let's go in and have a look at the component editor and oh, it's off the screen here.

Have to drag it in. And what do we got? Okay, we've got a BL layers over here. We've got Component Properties box plastered right over there. but you can move that around.

Oh, only within there. Okay, you can't actually move it outside of that window. That's that display window. That's interesting.

Anyway, what do we got? Buttons? Pin: Circle Pin Rectangle Pin Line Pin: Uh, you've got all your um. it looks like the same drawing stuff you had before. Uh, doesn't look like you can import an image though. which um, is sometimes nice for a component.

Um, very occasionally if you want to do something. but not certainly not a major feature missing. Um, and well. let's open a library.

It obviously knows it's going to my libraries. No libraries. Thanks for that. Examples Spice.

No libraries, projects, No libraries. Geez, we're not doing too well here. Where where are are our component libraries? They're not in the root subdirectory of Dip Trace Here, they're not in. they're not under my libraries.

You got to be kidding me. This thing doesn't it it? I'm sure I saw it install libraries when it was, uh, downloading. or maybe that was PCB libraries. actually? Yeah, I think it might have been.

so I'm not sure what's going on there, bugger. That's really annoying. They're the three three directories I've got and it doesn't come with any. Surely it comes with example schematic libraries? It must.

Yeah, it does. Because we were in the editor before. Of course we're in here. here.

We go at mail. boom boom boom. They're all there. all of the schematic symbol.

so I'm not sure what's going on there or where those libraries are. That is bizarre. okay. Import: Uh, you can import Eagle uh Eagle Script Okay, I'm not sure if that.

I assume that's an Eagle Library Maybe I'm not overly familiar with with Eagle, so maybe that's what they call their libraries. but I believe Dip Trace can import um Eagle libraries. So I'm not sure how good it actually is at it, but uh, I've heard it does actually do it, so this is a rather embarrassing. we can't do a can't edit a component because well, where's our library I Expected it to pop up here or something, or at least allow us to open a Li library and we got nothing fail.

Component libraries: Asteris Do asteris. Okay, what do we got? PCB Schematics examples: Okay, so we don't want that. My libraries as. Asis and there's nothing under there.

Got to be kidding me. No, not a thing. that's just crazy. No, not happy.

Not happy at all. And that's it. That's the dip. Trace unless it installed a separate subdirectory somewhere.

All right. Well, that's a complete fail. um I'm not sure it's I'll have to come back to that one. All right, let's assume that.

um, cuz the libraries are there. Look there they are. Anyway, let's go and convert this to no, let's try it. No, let's not go there yet.

We haven't done uh, any of the any of the design rule checkin. Let's do an ERC F9 electrical rule setup. This looks exactly like Alium. This is exactly the same um structure of uh, if it's it's very powerful.

it's um. it allows you to map uh, turn on and off various things whether you want errors, warnings, or um, or no errors at all. So at the moment it's only going to check. It'll only give you an error on three state power.

like if you're Tri stating a power I.E It's open or something like that. so it allows you to, um, all combinations of your PIN types. It allows you to um, what what you want to, uh, check for for various warnings. erors.

So if your schematic is giving you all these warnings, you can actually switch off specific things. It's rather neat. Um, so I I Like that? It's It looks exactly the same as Alium. So I don't know who stole it from who, or whether or not they both stole it from somewhere else.

But uh, it looks identical. So our design check hierarchy. Let's have a look. Um, I Assume this is only a one sheet project.

Nowhere is found in the hierarchy. We haven't looked at multi- sheet projects yet, so oh yeah, it' be down the bottom here there. There it is sheet one of course and it would have multiple sheets. So maybe we could try and find an example that had model sheets just just to check the hierarchy.

But let's go into design. Real checking. Bang. Uh no, it's done.

It's done already. There we go: Errors, pin types, warnings run. ESC Do it again. It's very quick.

It's instant, so that's good. localize. What does that do? I Assume I Thought that would have maybe zoomed in on the error or something. Ah, looks like it's highlighted.

Oh no, it hasn't I Thought it highlighted a particular era. Hey, that's neat. Hadn't noticed that before that automat. When you move your cursor over a um over a wire, there, it actually highlights the entire uh thing.

which is rather nice. I Like that. That's pretty. That's pretty neat.

It highlights all grounds. If if you're selecting grounds I assume there's some way to turn that off, but design. Real check-in works like. Li set up here we go.

Ah, look. Dip Trace Here's our here's our Librar Lib Dip Trace Li Why didn't that subdirectory show up before? Okay, yeah, there it is. There's all our schematic libraryies. Dip, trce lib girl.

why didn't that show up in the component editor? Okay, there you go. That's crazy. Anyway, we found it. So all component libraries what if we we can't actually open up and edit there.

but that just allows us to um Define which libraries that we have within the package? it looks like. edit Library There we go. So was I trying to do the wrong thing I was trying to um I wasn't editing my library I wasn't I was editing something else. So that's why I couldn't find the lib subdirectory Aha And if you want to update your current schematic, that's good.

Um, from the library and bang here it is. Now we're talking okay and this is exactly what you expect. Here we go. Here's the all of the jez got no end of battery.

Different types of batteries. That's crazy. It's awesome. Just absolutely crazy the amount of battery types they've got.

That's ridiculous. Anyway, can't complain about having too many. Uh, and there's the pattern down the bottom there. Wow, They got a lot of different battery.

That's just insane. It's great. I Love it. Now where do we choose our library? I Expected another like a Dropbox up here to select your library.

You've got it. Looks like it's got different, uh, different layers. So you can have like a graphical layer and a pin layer. By the looks of it, that's how they've looks like, that's how they've SE And then you can merge them.

Okay, neat. So you can Muck around drawing all sorts of fancy stuff on the on the uh, graphic layer and when you're happy with it, you can merge the layers together. Or maybe there's some benefit to keeping them separate I Don't know and you can move layers up and down. Um, to put one I presume to put one object behind the other.

Excellent. It's exactly what I expect. Um, and it, of course you'll have different, uh, part types of course. Um, like if you have like a Nand gate with multiple parts, that's a given that it's going to support that.

So how do we? Now let's open our library? No see, there's no Lib subdirectory. Where is this lib subdirectory? That's just crazy. Where is it we've loaded in our battery to? Oh, okay, right. Maybe because ah, right there you go cuz we've selected over here.

Got it? Okay, so if you want to. Okay, got it. Got it. Got it? Got it.

Where's where are the A's gone? Where's the atmail gone? It's vanished. Don't like that. Where's it gone? Ah, why? look. it's now.

put a at the end all the way over here. Okay, maybe. Okay, it doesn't list those in alphabetical order. I Find that rather annoying actually.

So let's select. So what you've got to do is you got to select your current Library here and then go. Library Edit: Library Okay, bang and that brings you into should do There You go your atmail library and then you can edit your devices until the cows come home home. Fantastic.

All right at Mega 32 let's have a look. We can pan around like that, get jump. Edit: a pin. Brilliant place.

A pin. How do we place a pin? There we go. Pin once again. I Expect just like Key Cat It doesn't show you the pin directly.

You've got to place it like that. That's annoying. now. How do you? Uh, how do you move? press M for move.

maybe? Ah, right. select and drag. Okay, so everything I rather like this art shows you the original uh snap point where you've moved it from. That's nice.

I Like this. someone was thinking when they designed this package. uh it. it works.

It's very. It's quite intuitive. I Really like it. They've you know the the item that you're going to, uh, work.

you know use on is automatically. you're going to edit is automatically highlighted. you can go in double click and you can pan around and you can. it's it's nice.

Okay, Excellent. So uh, if we want to create a new library, we can just generate a new library there. Do you want to save changes? no and then create a new component? Add new so we're creating a new part. Call it test.

We can Muck around with this all day. but uh, we shant. Oh, that's there we go. And it's a real dodgy part I'm creating here.

You know it's not exactly. Uh, not exactly the best. But there you go. We've just created layers with all what a different pin on a different layer.

What's going on there? Not sure. I Understand that. Okay, not sure. haven't figured out the layer system yet.

Merge all layers. Okay, you can select multiple layers like that and then merge them all. Bang. Okay, right, got it.

Weird. I'll figure that out later. but uh. We've created our part in our library called what I don't know test hint Untitled Library test and my libraries test and then we should be able to go into Library setup and I assume it hasn't put it once again, not in alphabetical order.

Check that out. Yeah, there you go and you can't. Yeah, you can't move them around in order, so that's I Think they need to fix that up? Definitely. So examples: Boom! my libraries test Eli is the file extension for component libraries.

Bang! When now got our test one close, we go over here into all the way. Oh man. So many of them trying to get all the way over to there's but granted, there looks like the Hey Where's my test one gone? Where's my test? It's not there. Don't tell me it doesn't automatically.

Uh, refresh that and maybe you got to restart the program or something. But yeah, that could very well be it. Yeah, okay, you might have to some. Oh, update, There we go.

No, that takes you to the website. Excellent. All right. And you can download like 3D models and stuff they don't.

Um, they don't put those in the download by default and let's go back to it. Where's the program Component editor H on? There we go. We're back in. All right.

All right. So I'm not sure what happened with my test Library there. That's bizarre. What we want to do now is we want to push this through door PCB because I think we've covered a good lot of stuff in there I'll I haven't actually uh started placing? uh? is there any different? Yes, there are differentiations between line and wire.

You got to be careful with that. Um, let's just try and let's say we want to be silly. And yeah, that the 90 thing works as you'd expect. Let's say we want to.

Oh, it highlights automatically. highlights that one to show that you're going to connect to that auto. Junction capability works just fine. What if we delete if we press delete? Oh I Deleted the entire part that was dumb Contrl: Zed because it was highlighted Silly me.

I if you want to if you want to erase that Trace No, Oh no. It deleted the whole blinking lot there. I'm assuming I'm going to highlight that Trace I'm going to hit delete and it's no wow. it's deleting everything attached to that Trace That is bizarre.

Okay, I let's try that again. Hit delete, Highlight that trace and hit delete and it's it's. deleted the entire Trace plus the part it was connected to. Why? That's weird I Don't want that.

That's crazy. how. how do you delete just a single line segment? Maybe you can't in that case. I Find that rather annoying if you can't delete a single line segment.

enter Okay, boom. It allows you to just end a line anywhere. but it doesn't. Maybe there is a way to delete a segment.

select all, add extra sheets. We haven't looked at that, but uh. I Don't see a way to just go into some sort of delete mode and delete an individual line segment. Lock selected.

You can lock parts, of course, properties, the wire property. You can change the thickness of it. Yep, Oh okay, this is the Class Property Okay, this is the classes for when you're doing uh, probably Auto routing and stuff like that so you you can Define like all your 5vt tracers to be a certain Trace width. So I want all my power traces to be big fat 50 th traces please.

and I want all my signal traces. um, to be 10 for example. So um, that's rather nice if you're into that sort of thing. and no.

so I'm very I'm quite disappointed by that. Maybe there is a way to do it, but I can't see a way just to delete that segment there and then continue. That's bad. That could be really annoying.

and I'm pressing delete now and it's not deleting anything that I'm under. So how do you delete something? I Guess this is where you need to read the manual, right? I'm trying to just trying to do this. Delete line. There we go.

Ah, there was a hot key there for it. Silly me. All right. Delete.

No, there's not a hotkey for delete line. Maybe there is, but it doesn't tell you what the what that function is. So delete wire, Delete line, and delete are three entirely different tools by the looks of it. So trap for young players there.

There you go. Yeah, there's that fat redraw problem. Don't like that. All right, enough around.

Let's have a play with the PCB. Let's go convert to PCB and see if it just does it because this is an example file. So I Expect all the libraries to be linked and everything. Um, it's loading up on the other screen here.

let me pop it in. Use schematic rules, use rules and settings from previous layout. That's nice. So if you've got all your design rule uh, stuff set up on a previous board, um, then you can do that.

That's that's rather handy. I Like that, but we'll just use the schematic rules. or maybe we can just ah, okay, we'll just choose. okay there.

Graphics Ah, Once again, this is like a this is like a onetime setup thing. It just uh, which Graphics mode we want to use for our PCB and let's shrink down and bring the PCB window on here. okay, a pan around. look at that, zoom in and out with the scroll wheel and it it's just randomly placed our parts.

I Rather like that, it hasn't uh, bunched them all together. Once again, they got this silly redraw fat line redraw thing. maybe I maybe I chose the wrong option for the graphics card just before and uh, maybe it would, uh, be better if I chose. um, chose one of the uh, one of those like a different Graphics option or something.

Anyway, I'm liking this that it highlights the component. If we go in the center, it highlights the component and if we go into there, it highlights the pad. So presumably we can operate directly on it knows which item we're going to operate on. So if I double click that.

oh, come on, let me edit that pad. I Want to double click? edit that pad Pad properties. Gee, Okay, well that's all right. at least.

allows me to easily get in there and select it as a Um through hole pad or a surface pad. different pad sh. Oh, they can support polygon pad shapes. Nice alums only just recently got that.

Um, and what do we got? The hole is uh oh, it supports that slots. nice. So I can actually change that to a um, it's it's by default. it's in inches here.

It looks like you can't change on the Fly Looks like you had to change your mode elsewhere. Um, in Alum you just hit control Q here and you can actually swap it inside the box. which is quite neat. But uh, let's um, let's change the uh.

Well, let's keep the width and let's keep the height. Let's say the height is 1 inch and that gives us a slot hole. Very nice. Um, very important capability to have slot hole capability and Pad properties.

And because we yeah, let's go up to uh, let's make it huge. Let's be silly. There we go. There's our pad.

Okay. allows you to just easily edit pads like that I like it if you grab the component, moves around or your rat's nests move with it. That's rather neat. Layers being you can turn your layers off and on.

Nice. Excellent. Way too easy. uh contrast mode.

Here's the all layers current only. Okay, so we need to. We'll have to load in a example PCB to see the advantage of that the high contrast uh mode but we can add layers. Layer Setup: Excellent.

Oh PL layers and Signal layers. Great top bottom. It doesn't allow us to okay because this is only the freeware version so it only gives us two layer uh capability. otherwise add can we add a plain layer? Let's try it.

Yeah, we can. Wow! Okay, I expected this to be in the freear one. Not to uh not to give us the capability to do that, let's add a another signal layer. H Okay, it's allowed us to add extra layers.

This is I Thought this was the freear version. Go figure. There you go. Layer one, layer two.

huh? Okay, uh. could have sworn that we had the uh yeah we do I popped up the about box. it is the Freear Edition go figure. Now what else? What we got in here? Uh, where have my components Bugg it off to I haven't uh I didn't switch them I didn't switch them off.

What happened there? Hang on. They're all. They're all switched on. What's going on? something? Something's not right here and I like that feature.

actually that's obviously uh, ground. There you go and it high and it pops up with the little tool tip there and tells you um, which uh, which um, device you're on, You're on U3, you're on pin 24 and tells you the location and the net name. Ground Excellent and it highlights the other ground pins in your design. Great! Now what's happened to my devices I Got no idea.

Um, this is a big fail I Think we should, uh, maybe cut our losses and uh, just for the sake of time here I Will just do that again because I don't want to, uh, waste time trying to fix it. So let's just uh, let's just do that. Let's cheat a bit there because this is not a tutorial. this is just a First impressions.

So we've got all our parts. Um I Think it has an auto place command somewhere. let's try and find it. Placement Setup: Auto Place selected Run auto Placement Arrange components.

Oh neat. This is a great feature when you first loaded your components in like this. Let's try the arrange components. a Oh that's nice.

That is lovely. Thank you very much Dip Trace that is brilliant. That's SA gives no end of time loading all your parts. Hit that button and there they all are spread out.

I Assume you can turn off your uh Rat's Nest Yeah you can turn off your rat lines look at Ah Beautiful! I'm liking this program. It's work. It's pretty darn intuitive. They've They know what they're doing.

Pads Vires you can turn off tracers, copper pores Dimensions H Route Keep outs patent Dimensions Great How do we do a board outline I Wonder uh Place Table Place Shape Place Component Place Pad static fire place mounting hole copper pore So they do make a distinction there between mounting holes and pads. That's rather interesting. Um, usually they're just mounting holes are just done as uh pads so that's rather neat. I Just placed a mounting hole there and it's obviously a different object type to properties and outer whole diameter outer diameter.

Okay, that's interesting I have to experiment with that more. Ah 3D View: Here we go. It's not Muk around. let's have a look at 3D View: Cannot find any models probably 3D models are not installed.

Yeah, that's fine attached 3D Models Oh okay. yep. Oh redraw reset View: Uh I've got I've got nothing I've got absolute Oh, because there's no board, there's no board outline. What am I trying to do? I'm an idiot.

Okay, duh. All right I don't actually have a board outline toin so it doesn't know where to uh, draw the 3D shape. So I have to load in a board for that measure. Boom boom No.

Oh, measure It popped up over here. Okay, no, where is it using the measure function? Don't know how that works. Oh, there we go, Right right? It just pops up down the bottom here. Got it all right? Let's uh Place Component Libraries Once again, where are the why? Doesn't it just load in the libraries by default? I don't Uh, don't understand that.

Well, it's I Guess you don't always want all libraries cuz it's annoying. you got to scroll through them and and stuff like that so that can be really annoying. But there's our there's our component. how do we rotate? Space bar.

Ah, too easy. Okay, excellent. I Love it. Unable to create? Ah, there we go.

We've reached our 300 pin limit. There you go. So the limit does apply to um, the PCB and I assume it's not pinned so you can have as many uh uh, vires and holes as you want. but uh uh.

the other thing with the upgrading, the priceing between uh, things. you only pay the price difference when you, uh, when you go between the light, standard and extended and the full. So if you're working on a board now and it's within the 300 pin limit and then you don't pay anything. If you want to go up to 500, you pay something extra if you want to go to, and then then if your next design is like a th000 uh pins, then you only pay the price difference and you slowly increment up to getting the full version.

I I Reckon that's not a bad. that's not a bad way to go, so that's a fail. We can't place, uh, any extra devices, so they've obviously done this example to meet the 300 pin limit. and uh, but that's a sizable design.

I mean look, you've got some. Really? that's a, you know, that's a big ass connector. There you got some big ass connectors. You've got quite a few chips, a lot of passive parts, and that fits within your 300 pin limit.

So you can do, you know, quite sizable designs. but obviously if you got like a BGA part, you know if you got a you know 300 pin BGA or something, then you're going to blow it. Um, your uh quer on just one part. but oh well, you can't have everything.

Let's have a look at this design information. Excellent. Tells us the number of pins. Oh, 777 of 300.

So why did it? Why is it? let us, um, load these components in if it's I Thought it looked like too many to be 300, but I went with it. Um, it's actually got 777 pins? Go figure. Anyway, Rat Lines I wonder this thing does have an auto router by the way and I'm probably not going to try that just on principle. Um, although it could be fun I mean you know there we go, it's Auto routing and it's Z% completion.

So there it's just trying to think at the moment I think that's the idea and uh yeah, Auto Routers Fun. Fun to watch, but you know they're Auto routers. That's annoying. How do I undo that? That was probably a bad idea and it allows you to plug into the Uh Spectra um Auto router and third party Auto routers if the internal one's no good, which is excellent.

Um, now what else have we got here? Let's have a look: I Never, Yeah, the measure was a bit limiting. Uh Place Dimension Place Shapes Place Text polygon pause Let's objects: Rat lines, View display all optimize rat lines. Oh, that's rather neat. It looks pretty pretty powerful.

It looks like there's uh. Anyway, let's set up our grid sizes. Our grid Siz is 0. Let's set up our grid to 0.1 in and our Y grid size identical with X it links like that and F11 is the grid.

Onoff. But I don't see I don't see the grid I don't see any uh, visual dots on there at all or lines or anything. So I'm not sure um, how you actually display your grid. So layer display.

No, that's bizarre. So maybe objects over here. There's nothing for grids I Would have assumed that that would have been enough to set set your grid size to .1 in. in custom.

That's fine, but why doesn't my grid? there must be a grid. It's not that that's Place Table going to assume that there's a grid button somewhere which switches the grid off and on. Measure: define origin. No, no weird.

Okay, very strange. All right. let's open a board, shall we? Do you want to save changes? No. I was just around and uh, what was this? This was example six.

Um, oh, we don't dip. Okay PCP six. So this is a pretty complex board, so let's open it. I'm assuming.

Aha there it is. Neat. Now we never did figure out how to do the board outline so it knows that's a board outline. So board points insert point, convert to shape.

Okay, so there must be an option up here. Maybe it's in placement to no objects. Ah, Place Board Outline: There it is. Yep.

so if you want to I'm I Missed that before so that's easy. You define your board outline and now our 3D mode should work. You bet we want to just do that. We want all those boom, no what? Fail.

it's gone on. Reset View redraw components. Come on. H Uh.

the 3D um Preview: I've seen some screenshots of it. It does look really good because it allows you to change the board color, disable the components, but in this case our board has just gone anyway. We can set the um this thing to all layers there go which is pretty useless. How do we cycle through right? Let's go through Syn current only.

Okay, so we're only displaying the current layer which is bottom and really annoying. top. There we go. So that's our top and they've done it like by default.

it looks like it's a copper sort of color for the top and uh, there's our bottom. But we can do a contrast mode and that's really quite nice. And uh, can we see our solder mask? Let's look at our bottom mask current only bottom mask. How do we? That's not our bottom mask? How do we View our bottom SOA M Layer there we go there.

No, that's top with okay, well no. I don't understand that solder mask mode isn't working as I Expect what's going on here. Layers: I Expect to be able to just look at the top mask layer. That's crazy.

Contrast: Okay, no, no, that's the. that's the copper pore. that's not the solder mask. Ah, what's going on? This is a bit.

it's rather annoying. I'm not sure what's going on here. yeah, not too happy with this. All I want to do is view my solder mask like why can't I do it obviously I'm doing something dumb.

What are these buttons here? Layer Setup: add layer. no no, not sure what's going on there. but once again, um, this is a four layer Design This has um, this has uh Power and ground in it and it's the fre there we go. It's even got split grounds.

um and it's in the freear version. So I'm not sure what the deal. Not sure what the deal there is. Um, because it's I Thought the freeway version was limited to two layers and 300 pins.

It's definitely limited to 300 pins as we''re seen. But it allows you to at least load in. um these. anyway.

let's gee. I don't know there's so much to. uh, look, you know so much to look at in uh, these packages. I've almost done an hour and really, it's hard to cover.

It's hard to cover everything. There's our 777 pins. Let's um, export. What have we got here? we've got.

Uh Gerber Excent allows you to export. Um, by the way, did I mention that the schematic didn't have a print to PDF Function I Don't think we looked it. don't think we looked at that. This is quite neat.

This is well laid out. I Like this: you can. oh preview. Oh gee gee, hello.

That's very nice. That allows you to preview the uh, the current. like the top solder mask for example. let's preview the top solder mask.

a very very nice. Let me put that on there and you can pan around and zoom. Oh, was Bble to zoom before? Definitely. Uh, maybe because I've resized the window somehow.

but it allows you to preview the uh solder mask. That's brilliant. Why? why can't I zoom in there anymore? I Could before with my mouse. it's it's locked up all of a sudden.

Ah, see. Now here's where your solder mask expansion hasn't worked. Okay, you've just got a solid block. or you've got too much solder mask expansion on those pads.

Um, so it just gives you a solid block. and then when you sold of this thing, you can just get Bridges across all your pins cuz that's a quad flat pack. um package there and like you. you should get you know gaps in you know you should get a space.

you know you should get solder mask between your individual pins and you haven't done that up there. and uh, that's what I was trying to muck around with before getting The View and also editing the uh solder Mas for that. So oh jeez, there's so much to seeing doing this thing. but I rather like it.

It's um, pretty darn intuitive and uh, let's is there any capability to uh, do panelization? Let's have a look cuz I think there might be I think I read somewhere that it allowed. want you to do route manual route setup We haven't even tried to Route any traces yet. Geez, we really? uh, design real Check Place Board outline Auto router setup oh gez I Could be playing around with this until the cows come home, but uh, I am led to believe that there is a way to do panelization Auto panelization just like in Altium and I'm probably missing it. Uh, but that would be awesome.

Um, because that if you're taking boards through to production of course. Um, that capability is uh, pretty much Essential I mean you can leave it up to your PCB manufacturer and I wanted to check as well whether or not the Uh 300 pin limit actually was a limit on just. ah, penalizing. Here we go: Edit: penalizing.

Copy: Matrix I Assume Copy Matrix is copy the board, but penalizing function. Here we go. Let's do a 3X3 It'll be a square panel. Let's do cuz it's a square board.

3x3 rail edges top and bottom. Yeah, that's looks good enough. 12.7 mm show panel border. Yeah, we want that panel size.

Well, I assume it's calculated that if I do that. yes, it'll automatically calculates the size of the panel for you. That's nice. That's nice.

It tells you how big your panel is going to be straight up without having to dick around create it, go in there, measure it. it's too big. duh. My manufacturer can't handle that.

uh panel width. You know it can't handle the 360 High um panel and it allows you to just muck around. Okay, I can fit 5x5 into the maximum panel size that my manufacturer can actually um, handle. so you know it's It's really quite neat.

You know, if they can, um, if they can, usually your manufacturer PCB manufacturer will tell you what size. Uh well, what maximum panel and then your PCB assembler will tell you what maximum panel size their pick and place machine can handle. So for high volume manufacture stuff, that's just nice to be able to do that without around. Let's press okay and see what it's done.

Ah, there we go. Beautiful. Copy: one copy, two I like it beautiful and it doesn't. It doesn't display them.

Um, unfortunately. but I wonder if you can do 3D View Although we didn't get 3D view working, did we? so uh, save all new models? we never did get that 3D preview working. So I'm not sure what was. Maybe maybe the board is too big, maybe it's outside of the uh, the limit, but it should tell you that the 300 pin limit should tell you that, but the certainly not working.

Or maybe it's a graphics once again, it's that graphics card. I've chosen the wrong one. but that panelization function. Absolutely brilliant.

and if we go, let's actually generate those. uh Gerbers export Gerber and see what. see what happens we I've been going for an hour now so I want to call it quit soon but let's uh, let's just do export export all. let's just go wham um it allows you to set use use the design origin.

nice okay. does everything you want inches metric Okay, very good. I like it export all and oh no ah oh fail. This function is not supported by Freeware to enable manufacturing output.

Upgrade to dip Trace Starter: Okay, you've at least got to pay your 75 bucks or or whatever it is to go to the F and that's fine. Okay, fair enough. you know if because I guess they figure if you're producing freear ones for hobby based things you don't need professional high volume manufacturing panelization capability Fair Call Okay, there you go. So uh, we'll have to muck around with that another time.

So how do we turn off panelization? That's that's really quite neat. It just works. but it doesn't. Actually, it hasn't put fiducials in.

Where are your fiducials? Where are your tooling holds? You know it hasn't. you know, haven't automatically added those things you know. I Expected a fiducial down here plus a you know, a a tooling hole, three fiducials in the corner. They're going to the trouble to do this automated panelization, but they don't finish it off be you know, if you, uh, send this board straight to your manufacturer and you get it back and there's no there's none of your tooling holes, your fiducials, you're going to have a hard time manufacturing this thing.

and you've got to know that, um, when you're actually laying out these boards. So oh well, you know, at least it allows you to do the panelization. That's a good thing. How do we un panelize it? Silly question I know.

But uh, we do do want to un panelize this thing. Uh, well. just control. Zed I Guess there we go.

Contrl: Zed File Export: because I do want to try this Gerber Capability: Um, let's go export all. oh what? what? You can't No, it's not even penalization, it's you can't even export a Gerber. Are you kidding me? This fun in the freeware Edition To enable Manu What the hell are you supposed to? How are you supposed to? get your board manufactured? I Don't believe that I am I Maybe that's a bug because I've let's just reopen that board file. Let's try that one more time for the dummies.

Gerber Surely it lets you generate. okay, maybe. Oh gee, um, maybe it's You know, if you just want to do your top and bottom, let's just do top and bottom for example. and Export Okay, right.

Maybe it doesn't let you do the uh uh, solder mask or something like that. Perhaps no, but you want that. Um, no. maybe it doesn't let you do the uh paste.

Perhaps that could be it because paste would be deemed to be a manufacturing type thing. um, apertures have not been. Do you want to set them automatically? Yeah. Do ah what? No.

This is a fail if the freeware version cannot export. Gerbers How the hell are you supposed to get your board manufactured? What's the point if using a freear version? Even hobbyists need to get their board. M What? They think they're going to print them out onto a old F fashioned freaking toner or something. you know.

print them out onto an A4 You know, go print or something like that and then dump it to your stupid printer and then use Tona transfer. Give give me a break. Even hobbyists want to generate Gerbers to send to a PCB manufacturer because they're so cheap these days. Oh, not happy.

Not happy. Anyway, I'm going to have to install the uh, they do have a full 30-day trial of the full version, so I might have to try that out. But um anyway. anyway, there's a few I there's a lot I like in this: P I'm getting a real good vibe.

It's all about the vibe. those Australians will get the joke. Um, and it's I get good vibes from this that the thing is pretty easy to use. It's pretty powerful and uh, it should do the job to replace a a more professional package like out him designer.

You know it's probably lacking. uh, a few things of course, but I get the impression that it's going to do the job quite well and probably lives up to its rep of being a what is it professional PCB design tool it's it seems I'm getting the good vibe I've only used it for an hour now, but it seems pretty darn good. so I might have to do some more exploration of this program anyway. Um, if you're into maybe an alternative to Eagle um, it's worth.

Certainly worth checking out, but if the free wear one can't do Gerbers gez I'm very disappointed by that that's a fail. Um, really, that's almost a showstopper for the freear version. That's crazy. So anyway, it may it may not be it.

Maybe I'm just doing something dumb, but oh well. I I Do rather like this. I'm I'm going to play around with this some more. I'm pretty darn happy it's much easier to use than uh Key Cat it seems, uh, just generally nicer to use and better thought through.

and the options are sensible and um, it seems to be doing everything I expect it to do so I First impression: Pretty darn good. Definitely check it out some more. So I hope you enjoyed that. It's an hour and 7 minutes.

I'll catch you next time.