Fritzing is also terrible for stripboard planning: it assumes you'll be going from breadboard to custom PCB.
The future of the package seems uncertain: it's barely maintained, and the original core developers seem to have gone away. The current version of Fritzing doesn't even have a part editor. Developing new Fritzing parts is an exercise in frustration. They're always very clear about what everything is, and where it should go.įritzing makes pretty pictures, but it's a huge, slow package. I'd suspected that your diagrams were hand-made in a general drawing package, rather than using a circuit-specific CAD package. Like stand up resistors on end when things got tight. So i did develop a number of space saving techniques there. Thinking about it now it was quite a baptism of fire at that age with no training at all. The engineer would sketch out a circuit and it was my job to get it to fit into this fixed module on strip board. It would, at a pinch, fit two small pieces of strip board on it. The special bit was a 2" square by 3" high black plastic module with an octal valve base. I first got to work in the special products department, where we produced a limited number of bespoke products for industrial control, based on a fixed chassis. When I left school at the age of 16 in the 1960's, I went to work for a small electronics manufactures. Of course there is always going to be an exception or two. But the actual placement should be that so the majority of the connections ( wires ) don't have to cross over the chips to get where they are going. I believe that all chips should be mounted the same way round. Good, although I have been laying out stuff for years now that, what ever they are, I don't really consider them to be tricks, but just what comes natural.īasically I have this attitude that the strips should not dictate the layout, too many people fuss about this too much and they end up not doing anything because they can't route it to their satisfaction. I noticed a few little layout tricks in your diagrams which have come in handy when routing stripboards. I've read some of your posts on the Arduino forums too, and they have been very useful during my many forays into programming and designing stuff using the Uno and Pro-Micro. I could probably do something similar with say, Inkscape if I were able to draw decent components In fact, I've used some of your diagrams as inspiration when I've laid out some of mine. You do an amazing job with your diagrams. It's a nice piece of software, bancika does an amazing job keeping it updated with the features people suggest. I've been using diylc for a lot of my stripboard designs. I figured you'd be using something like a 2d design package.
I use this software for all my other diagrams, and now there is a PC version available if you are that way inclined.
I export the final diagrams as a PDF for submitting to the magazine, that way they can be reproduced at any size while not affecting the resolution. So on the strip board for example, once I get the length of strips I want, I group that and just duplicate it however many times I want rows on the board. The thing I really like about it is that once I have a component or group I can duplicate it, then manoeuvrer it into place and then subsequent duplications (cmd and D) apply the same offset. The use of grouping and ungrouping makes it quite easy to do. Here I have some standard front and back boards, I drew previously but I have to add or remove rows and holes to make it the size for the project I am going to make. I use the same for the strip board layout. That is have the minimum number of crossings and right angle bends. So the schematics are quite simple to make and I can put the Pins anywhere on an IC to simplify the wiring.
It is just a general purpose 2D drawing package, but once I draw a component I can create a library version so I can drag it out when I want to reuse it.
In the very early days I used MacDraw and changed over to MacDraft when apple abandon MacDraw. Could anybody tell me what software is used for the stripboard/perfboard diagrams, esp.