Ok honest to goodness question this time – love this program – getting it sorted out but one thing that I need an answer on is in the pcb view sometimes I’d like to select an entire row of parts to move them. I know I can use CTL to select them one at a time but I want to select them all with the mouse.
Problem is it’s selecting the board and moving it also.
How can I keep this from happening? -thanks
(by the way, just one comment at this point – selecting parts can be very difficult sometimes – have to really enlarge the view to get it to select).
You can select them all with a mouse box, then use CTL and click on the board to deselect it. You can also hide the board from the view menu by un-checking the board layer. You can lock the board by right click on the board then click Lock Part. Or just move the thing out of the way…
also “this just in” – when you add a part in the schematic view on a board that you’ve already populated quite a bit, when I go to PCB view to move the part, why isn’t it placed outside of my previous art?
I’m struggling right now to select a part I just added and it’s in the middle of a rats nest – I can’t even grab onto it.
If a part is difficult to select, select it in a different view, the part will be selected in all views. Then go to the other view and grab a hold of it while it is selected.
To select with a mouse box: start outside of the board with your mouse cursor then drag it in across the board and the parts you want to select…
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I think this software is what I’ve been looking for for a very long time. Getting to know it better (just started yesterday).
Here’s what I think, unless you’re doing a pretty simple circuit –
Start with the PCB view lay down a few parts at a time then organize the schematic – do all the traces manually. (actually think I like the yellow and orange a lot now). rinse and repeat.
This is a very cool program and fills a void between something that’s overkill like Eagle etc and the low end or online stuff that forces you to use a specific pcb service.
Not to keen on the hassle of wire placement and these bendpoints business. trying to run a wire buss between a row of 12 chips and have spent an hour on it with no sucess.
Why when you set a bendpoint does it actually distort the wire? You have to play with it to get it to bounce back to the grid. I set my grid at .05"
Maybe I’m not understanding – you have to put in a bendpoint to connect a wire to a wire? Seems the only way to do it. Kinda weird they call it a “bendpoint” – it seems like it’s also an important “contact point”. don’t like this wire business at all.
When you grab a hold on your bend points, hold the shift key down and one of the sections will snap to 45 or 90 deg. You can always turn the grid off if you want. If you double click a bend point it will delete. You can also set the trace width… individually, Unfortunately you can’t set it globally, they default at 24 mil.
After you get your parts on the board and run some traces, it is best to complete your schematic. Sometimes when you connect a trace to a bend point it is not actually connected to the pin unless it is in the schematic… although, they may have fixed the issue… If the schematic is connected properly it will make it easier to connect all of those traces. Don’t forget to use your vias, they make life a whole lot easier…
You can’t set track width globally before you stat, but you can Routing/Select All Traces, change the inspector track width, and the change it again to the width you want after you are done.
You can click on a connection and everything connected will light up yellow.
Just found out if you double click on a contact with a ratsnest in PCB, it becomes a trace automatically.
If you hold down the ctrl key first then grab the bend point, it will disable the grid snap for adjusting that trace. If you hold down the alt key and click on a bend point, the bend point becomes a connection for drawing a trace instead of moving the trace bend point.
You will need to drop another quarter in the slot…
That is a good question, there is a text file in the gerber (???_pnp), that names the parts and location… but not really what the part is. They would also need the BoM. In the Inspector window, there is a place to enter a part#… you can change that number or fill it in if it is blank.
You would really need to check with the assembler to see what they need. I assume this is a proto and will be hand assembled.
