Hi got a bit of an interesting one today I Thought we'd take a look at and a rather obscure EDA slash our PCB package now I actually got a PCB follow that I've got it open and I've got the Gerber's as well, but got the original PCB in a program called Wim PCB and I don't recall ever hearing of this thing. so I thought we'd actually check it out and see what we can see. So let's actually have a look at here. It comes from a company quarter CSI EDA and they're a Japanese company and they know.

here's their product lineup. Let's have a look when. Schematic: wind spice when PCB which is the one we're after PCB Design to win signal which should be signal integrity stuff ie. you know, simulation high C You know, impedance control and all.

That's sort of in fact that one. no yeah, that one's just impedance control and crosstalk and things like that. Grbac Kam editor tool: it's got a 3d PCB viewer, electro electro route, audio routing our tools and they're just the various packages that you can get. You can see it's like it looks like an old school program probably Jeff main market would be Japan because I've never heard of the thing there.

Maybe I've heard of it but I've never like looked at the thing before and it's got separate modules. You know this is like really, you know, like older school stuff. Most of the packages these days they're kind of like integrated sort of thing which is much better. but I know you know likes of Kicad and things are separate.

but anyway I Thought we'd have a look at this and it. If you're wondering about the pricing of this package here it is. It's here in Japanese yen so we'd have to convert this. So let's like if you get like the CSI EDA Pro Pack for example then what you get wind schematic.

the PCB pro of the Gerber and the 3d view are basically everything that you need at all you know for 2000 Javanese yen? sorry two million Japanese yen. you get the router as well and they do actually have a free viewer as well which I have actually downloaded and tried but it didn't work. So I'm gonna download the trial of the full package here. and what? The I just converted two million Japanese yen here and it's into US dollars.

It's seventeen thousand T and a half thousand US dollars Wow I Found another website which like said it was in the order of like two three thousand dollars or something like that. so that's that is insane that price. but hey, maybe is this my Japanese viewers out there is Wind PCB and CSI Evi Isn't it like a de facto standard in Japan or whatever? Anyway, if you go into the wind PCB here which is the package on after because I've got a PCB file IO and here's all the files that it all all the stuff it can do creating PCB parts well you know I'm sure it's a fully-featured our PCB package but all separate modules of course, which doesn't make it as integrated as you know our TM and other art type packages out there, but still. hey I Got nothing against like having separate tools like that are kind of like it actually I'm bit old-school in that regard now.

I actually had a look. you can't download it. You can like doing an inquiry or something like that. It's even impossible to find the price on here I think I like I only found that by googling and stuff like that.

So yeah, I couldn't find it. but after googling some more I found it's actually available for download from a company called Rutten Technology and being Australian I couldn't help but think of this: sorry yeah, sorry for that Kevin Bloody Wilson there for the inside, it might be a lot of Kevin bloody Wilson fanboys out there. Anyway, let's have a look at this thing. I downloaded it and this is like they give you a license but I think there's also a hard dongle that you can optionally use as well.

It asked us before, look at this. this is the interface of actually installing this thing and it said do you wish to mean do you have a license I went no, do you have a hard dongle and I went no And it brought us to this clunky looking thing. Anyway, we can create a new user here called Dave and we can login. It's no hard key or licensed client do you want still running evaluation mode? You betcha We do.

So let's run it. and Tada, we're in. sorry. Popped up on the other screen by default.

We're in like flee and welcome to CSI EDA Version 5 Click here if you want to close this window. Oh No Look so this is like the we're using. got the evaluation I'm not sure what the limitations of the evaluation I Read somewhere that there could be like a pin limit or something like that. perhaps.

Anyway, we've got demos. PCB 1 What demo? There we go. We've got a nice-looking demo. I Just use my scroll war scroll wheel here and we're in like Flynn and I Don't like the big crosses there that when your looks like you've zoomed to a certain point and you get those crosses.

Yeah, that's just really, really kind of frustrating. I'm sure you can change all this now. Yep. I can pan around using my right mouse, hold it down and then drag.

it's a little bit. It's a little bit jerky. that's just not my screen capture. It seems to be a bit, but it's ok.

Zooms in and out. Look at that. No walkers. But yeah, it's hardly like you know what you see is what you get, but you can see the whole sizes in there which is really good.

Presumably I'm just I haven't used this before I'm gonna go in there to my ped dimensions. Here we go: Pin: that's the X where's a hole size hole size unit mil? We don't want none of that Mil rubbish. I Only use mills for I Don't use them for whole sizes of course because these rules are all metric. but if we change that to say 1.1 millimeters.

yep, it's gonna change that in real time. But yeah, look, this is like really old school GUI type interface. Is that someone remind me? Is that like Delfy that out him was originally written in and kind of still is a lot of it. Um I don't know.

that button looks there. that's sort of. Those buttons look kind of familiar. What does anyone know what happened there? Know what happened to our pad? All right there we go.

Okay, right. because we had selected it. Okay, there we go. so we can go in there.

Mills Why does it keep going back to Mills Because I'm defaulting toward or something? Anyway, Yeah, there we go. Tada. look at that and it's changed. Only real time beauty.

So that here's all got the basics of a PCB package. So this is when: CSI EDA or routing using Rutten technology I Love it. I Don't know if routing they're an affiliate company or reseller or whatever. but anyway I was able to do the download from there.

That's kind of groovy. I'm not sure. yeah, you can select it. just that trace segment.

What if you hold down shift or something? No I know. Yeah, there we go. We can select multiple ones. Can we hold down like something and select entire? How do you select entire traces? I don't know attribute edit Select Anyway, it's it.

Looks like originally fully featured PCB Package: We've got an inspector that presumably we can inspect a part. Can we know? Oh, there we go. The track attribute is showing you the entire net. that's kind of groovy and packages.

There's a list of packaged files that we got. No. it's a very similar to Out IAM in the life. a little preview window down there and things like that, but that's that's not too shabby.

they're there. all the different. PR All the different pads in here are they. So there's an 18 mega hundred and twenty eight and they're all the different iPads and that he used and V is presumably are they yeah? I Got DRC Design rules set up.

It's all very familiar. defaults. You can set it up, that's all. Oh, I kind of like the grid array there, so copper to copper for example I Like that.

there you go. You can do pad to pad clearances. Mmm. same net route, length limit, track width, minimum, all that sort of stuff and you could store those as a configuration.

Okay, if it didn't have that and that would be really kind of messy. Can we? How do we turn off layers? Top that just focuses on a layer and not sure how to go single layer mode. Oh look, we can do density analysis, Density net all well. I Love a good density analysis.

Look at that. There we go. All the hotspot is around that micro there that eighty mega was it. So you can see that's just like the routing density where you know like you you can do that with your board to see where all that you know there's not much room left or out, additional traces and stuff like that so that's kind of cool.

It's got all the funky stuff PCB 3d designer and database report image, vector height diagram that'll be for your 3d stuff and gate and pin swapping. Ah nice, it's got pin swapping, poor thermals. Mmm. come online for those who know pop-up Anyway, Oh yeah, there it is down there.

Is that the command line? There you go. You can probably just run command series I Think a hotkey list for it as well of one of the keys to a good efficient CAD package is having and knowing your piece of B shortcuts but layering colors. It's pretty full-featured package. Wow Man what a B for if it is 2 million Japanese Yen Woof designed for manufacture.

cool just for kicks I'm gonna see if I can unwrap Yep Can I own that's will be unrouted I Assure you bet I'm sure. There we go. and that is the rat's nest. That's the rat's nest display.

It takes a little bit to redraw the the fills on there. They're not terribly quick so it's not the most responsive thing when the copper poles are on. Presumably you can turn the copper pours off and stuff like that. But yeah, it's left.

so it's unrouted Everything except and left. all the pores and everything else. I wonder if we can just reroute that set up? Water out? Can we just order out Designer more spectra? Now we've got to go over and use the auto route tool. Do we run or no? Run order router.

but you can export the spectra and other better as processing your application instance. Please wait for end of routing. Yeah. Ok I Want to see it? Any other tracks? Come on.

Come on. Oh is it like yeah, no, it's not doing anything. Is it? No, it's boring. Yeah, well worth a shot.

Oh, here we go I Just load it in. Sample one 3di so it's called up the 3d tool here and that's we go. Can we just hold Ctrl and and spin it? Shift Move Alt? No. How do we spend? Damn it.

I Want to spin this puppy in three dimensions Anyway, Copyright 1995. It's a 99. Yeah, that kind of says it all. Rolling We have Auto Rolling.

Oh great. Oh, look at that. Oh, that could be my new intro for the blog. What do you think? Get that old spinning intro if people remember I had a spinning 3 3 D board back when you know, like episode 20 or something 250 or some the early episodes and I actually did that in our team that was a board I designed it out him and I actually spun that by hand using a space navigator so she'd go watch the intro to those videos.

Yeah, I spun that by hand and that took quite a bit of skill. but there you go. Whoa. Makes you dizzy, oh man, psychedelic and loaded up another one which was the largest at 3.2 mega.

it seems to have not remembered that. Yes, I wish to run eval mode and this one looks fairly funky. So let's let's pull this full screen and let's go Auto roll because I know you want to. well that's really struggling and I've got no slouch of a machine.

Let me tell you, there we go. I'm scrolling in all three axis. Come on, flip it over so we can see the parts. it works.

This would have been state-of-the-art for the day, no doubt. Well, I'm not sure. You know when when did they introduce this? You know, who knows? You've just got a hold down the button and move your mouse. There you go, we can zoom in.

that can we zoom into the board like you can in out here? My wonder. Oh yes, we can see inside the veers. Look at that and see inside the board. Can we? No, we're not.

No, sorry. it's not that advanced because that's cool. That's what you can do. An outtie image.

You can fly inside the board. It's a really impressive on multi-layer boards and stuff like that, so it's really it's actually quite handy. But yeah, there you go. That's the 3d package and that is a separate program.

So what do we got? System information: Why is here? CPU There you go. Copy right, it's got still got copyright 2006 Wow Wow and that's the thing. I'm running version five Point four here and I think this is from the Routan website. but if you go to say sorry da I think I downloaded the latest viewers five point, eight Point two or something.

So yeah, I don't know how, update how frequently software is updated, what the latest version is or whatever, but this is the latest version on the Routan website. So anyway. hmm contrary to what it says on the website, this actually seems to be fairly integrated. I mean you know his schematic and PCB you know, operate in the same window.

It's very familiar to Altium users for example in other CAD packages. So um yeah, I'm not sure what's going on there I Can't show you having screen captured the other screen here, but if I actually go into what its installed in my programs menu, there's a CSI EDA version 5. There's the Gerber designer which is separate. There's the 3d designer which we've seen which is a separate package.

There's a route designer which is separate and signal integrity. but apart from that they're identical. So and the signal integrity won't let me run. It says there's no license for the signal integrity.

so there you go. This is a bit Plain Jane but that works. It's much quicker than the PCB of course because piece of it's got a draw. you know, solid polygons and everything else.

For the ground pause I did check It is not being slowed down by my screen capture program. So yeah, it is a bit slow even on my machine which is pretty darn good. So there is the standard sheet stuff. Still haven't figured out how to go single? Yeah, takes a while.

It reminds me of old pro Tell for dos. it very much reminds me of that excepting you couldn't see whole sizes on Proton for dice, but it's kind of. That's just what that refresh reminds me of. And look, I mean we can have multiple boards in the one you know project.

So this is the driver board we've got here. So I'm not sure what these things doing. Some a serial interface or something like that. Is this some sort of like motherboard or something like that? And then this is the serial mainboard and they've got multiple ones of those in the same projects.

but I'm not sure what's doing with in terms of integrating four. you know it doesn't have to say, doesn't seem to have any. ECAM Stuff where you know you can integrate them and fit together. it might you know you might be able to fit them together in the 3d view or something about and go like that I Got no idea where.

Obviously this is just the first time I've used it and had a look at it. It's a complete fail here. I Mean check it out. Like these pin numbers, these are all horizontal.

These ones are horizontal as well. On those pins, it should automatically reroute them to our vertical. If you know, if you've got to do that, that's just that's just silly stuff. I Mean you know it doesn't even put them in the center of the pad goodness.

It's got the net names down here. but yeah, that's not. that's not terrific. and when you highlight the package, the net names disappear.

So yeah, that's not the best thing. Yeah, look, they've got unique part number. IDs very kind of. you know, kind of.

Altium like so. anyway. I'm not sure if this how popular this package is. Maybe it's the industry de facto standard in Japan Who knows, but I'm dealing with another company who's not in Japan and they're using this and I'm trying to read the file unfortunately I have tried to read in my file.

they gave me a dot PCB file and in this as you can see here, it's expecting dot PCB file the actual word I've actually just got dot PCB but even then I tried to rename it it would. It just sits there and spins its wheels forever. and I have to shut down the software so it's maybe it's not. It's obviously not a compatible file or whatever, so maybe it's in an older version, a different version, not the Routan version.

That could be the problem. Rutan's always a problem. What else can we do in here with the route stuff and we will. Saw the Unreal before and logo are teardrops.

teardrops. F11 is the hotkey, so can we just go in there? Select that and go if eleven please. Our teardrop. Except what one of the default values look at that Bobby does.

Allah knows a teardrop. Oh, it brings a tear to the eye. And it's got parallel routing modes, but you know these aren't I Don't think you can just drag them and select and drag. And things like that in terms of like, you know, buses and all sorts of stuff.

You spread them, spread, action. Love it. Spread all. Know what about placing a new part that looks like a part symbol up there and get part? Yep, that's the right one.

But why? There's just like nothing. There looks like all the libraries. If it does come with libraries, it's not installed. It's like a 300 Meg install.

It's not huge. Don't know what extend is? No, no unmount? No, No no. nothing installed in evaluation mode behind a fault. Complete fail and granted, now it seems no huge amount better.

Go in here and double-click on a part and open it up. Seven for ALS Five seven for classic and the pins. We can just go in there and have a fiddle. No workers.

That's the preview, so maybe we'd have to now. You can't even like can't reorder can we? No, no, but we can go in there and change them. Live Simulation: Unknown Modern Fire You can insert the model file directly here so that would go into the simulator. That's pretty good.

Analog to digital Bridge VHDL Wow VHDL Integration Really. Hmm, that's interesting. Didn't expect that one. So what you can do is you can just highlight tracks here and delete them.

It's exactly Oh I Deleted the video. Oh there you can connected stuff I'm sure you can I change that. This one's still had a connected and then if we go up here here, we've got manual route. Let's give that a bill.

It's like, well, it's not snapping to anything I like it when it snaps and highlight, but presumably we can just select that I Yeah there we go snaps to Center Beautiful. It dims everything else and shows the net that we go into. Fantastic! Bobby Does lasso if I go like that like that Widow and it automatically goes out. It's completed that net it knows, so it's reasonably reasonably intelligent.

Manual route in there. I'm sure I can do more advanced stuff and it's got itself a Gerber viewer too. So I don't mind that at all. That seems to work out fairly well.

I've got multiple layers selected here, so this is going to be good enough for my purpose. I've got the Gerber files as well. or you could use any other good view, alt or more whatever one you want to use. So yeah, unfortunately, my PCB file that I want to inspect doesn't work.

But yeah, I'll still be able to do the job with the Gerber's But yeah, nice little Gerber viewer that's a separate program. It just loads up. It doesn't Didn't ask me for a license evaluation or anything like that. so maybe that's a freebie.

And here you go: I Found all the library files 3d library files in there. So there we go. There's are your different packages. Not a massive amount, but yeah, it's got some no that wasn't Delfy that I was thinking of before.

It was a visual basic like an old. Maybe it's an old version of Visual Basic or something. and it's got AV basic subdirectory in here. So there you go.

That makes sense. And also when I installed this that asked me if I wanted to install Microsoft.net Framework 1.1 That's not sure what the current version is, but yeah, it seemed ancient and it wanted me to install that. So I installed it and it just all worked. So that was pretty seamless.

And they've got some hilariously old examples in here. Oh, look at this. nicer rounded corners so the electrons don't fly off. Beautiful 2006 for these are evaluation samples in here: Education: PCB Sample: CSI EDA EDA Solution: Yes, we want to run that, but yeah, this is.

It's pretty old and clunky, but you know it's a recently powerful PCB package, so you know through the business it's just a tool. Now we're talking. look at this samples down at: Bluetooth Demo: That's not 2006. So let's uh.

there we go. Let's call up the 3d. Yeah, it keeps asking me do I wish to do that Jeez, that's not modeled very well. It's not a terrific example is they got a couple of through-hole parts over here.

Nothing else is rendered. You've got your like your flush memory here and that's about all she wrote. I Mean jeez here. they need to give better examples than that.

Wow high-speed 8-bit risk base. What else are we got? It's card reader. what's what's Mp3? now? it's all pretty simple stuff in it. Oh, that's 2005.

Wow Jeez, it's pretty old. SMC Tests: Yeah, look at that. PLC See, Wow, that's that's. actually quite quite decent.

Our 3d mode I Don't mind that at all. You know you'd have to go in there and see if you can. You know you get your solder mask actually. Yeah, hang on.

yeah, that is the no. that's the ground plane. Can you see the solder mask expansion? No, not by default I Don't think. oh no, that's the ground.

What's it try to do? Oh I know I'm not entirely sure what the hell is wrong with that, huh? What's wrong with that routing? Goodness gracious. Anyway, I've waffled on for far too long, showing you this package you which you'll never ever use and you'll never ever consider. I'm sure. CSI a da.

but hey, the website. you know it's still there and they're still. it looks like that. There's still you know selling this thing and soon as a global alliance, you know.

and that's their main. That's pretty much they're the best. CAD tool for circuit design and development so you know sure they've got a nice loyal client base and everything else. It's just that, you know, hands up, if you've ever used this in any way, shape or form, even like a previous version, could have been bought out by this.

CSA Global Alliance I don't know I think I have heard of like when PCB like you know, a decade or two back or whatever it is and a lecturer route I think I may have heard of Anyway, yeah, but it's a pretty obscure type package so if you've had any experience with this, let us know in the comments down below how prevalent is it I'm sure it's you know, probably quite. It's got a good audience in Japan or whatever, but price can't be right. can't be. Surely it's insane amount of money.

Wow Rutten Catch you next time you.