DipTrace Version 2.3 is out today!

[Mechatrommer]

yeah maybe what i reported is intentional or left as is as a feature. i demonstarated the simple board layout, i was editing a reallife circuit where i have components where they have route keepout below multipoints polygon, i was too particular i keep re-arranging the components and origin, in effect i need to re-align the route keepout as well, it was an annoyance. but i keep wondering why its not happening when i was using ver2.2X, a mystery.

[Kremmen]

Actually what i am saying is you are facing a fact of life. Incompatible snap grids will always cause this phenomenon, and it has nothing to do with Diptrace as a product, or any other product for that matter. Switching the coordinate origin to a point not on the current snap grid will cause all future grid point to be off as well.
The easy workaround: don't switch the origin to a nonaligned point. Failing that, don't touch features (pads, vertexes, whatnot) that are not on the current grid. Or lock them so they don't move whatever you do. Failing even that, you are basically out of luck and nothing can prevent this issue from occurring.

[Mechatrommer]

Switching the coordinate origin to a point not on the current snap grid will cause all future grid point to be off as well.

thats why i proposed to diptrace team so the app will use its own grid reference system, by saying that it means whenever i try to change origin to a non-aligned pad/component etc the origin will not snap exactly to that non-aligned coordinate, but snap to the closest grid of diptrace's reference coordinate system. so it will not counterfeit the "snap to grid" features. the only way that can make a component be off the grid is using manual XY input or snap "enable" or "disable" which the user should be intentionally or aware by clicking that feature.

now to the non-aligned pad, sometime we are constrained by real life components that are not metric or imperial aligned, so we 'll need to design pattern or footprint that is off the grid, but when we place on pcb we need them to be metric aligned. accidentally snapping origin to this "off the grid" pad will screw the alignment and diptrace failed to notify this to the user. i think this is where a software should do its role, by automatically avoiding this confusion or notifying user.

FWIW, i used origin and ruler feature to place a "very" symetric circuit and find the centre an distances of components on my differential probe (symetric between +ve and -ve signal path), a few mils off should be no problem at all from technical point of view, but you know when people get too particular like me the problem arises but if diptrace team cannot listen or find the matter too trivial, then i have to live within the limitation, thats how the world works anyway

[Kremmen]

Really, the Novarm boys would be the right ones to respond to this, but let me just ventilate with you...

Switching the coordinate origin to a point not on the current snap grid will cause all future grid point to be off as well.

thats why i proposed to diptrace team so the app will use its own grid reference system, by saying that it means whenever i try to change origin to a non-aligned pad/component etc the origin will not snap exactly to that non-aligned coordinate, but snap to the closest grid of diptrace's reference coordinate system. so it will not counterfeit the "snap to grid" features. the only way that can make a component be off the grid is using manual XY input or snap "enable" or "disable" which the user should be intentionally or aware by clicking that feature.

But in such a case why are you targeting the snap point of a feature? Why not move the origin to an existing grid point? That way the grid stays aligned. I grant that i haven't tested how well that works if the snap point is embedded under a heap of layout features. Possibly there could be an additional selection tools to only enble snapping to specified classes of layout elements, such as exist in "proper" CAD programs.

now to the non-aligned pad, sometime we are constrained by real life components that are not metric or imperial aligned, so we 'll need to design pattern or footprint that is off the grid, but when we place on pcb we need them to be metric aligned. accidentally snapping origin to this "off the grid" pad will screw the alignment and diptrace failed to notify this to the user. i think this is where a software should do its role, by automatically avoiding this confusion or notifying user.

When you have created a footprint, the pad to pad spacings and other features of that footprint are fixed. The footprint has an insertion point that will fall on your current grid. All features of the footprint then fall on wherever they are in relation to the insertion point. There is no way around this. The only thing you can do is to make the insertion point to coincide with a pad or other key feature. Then that pad or feature is guaranteed to always be on the current grid. All other pads will keep their relative positions, never mind what grid size you have. Otherwise i can only say that you get what you ask for. IMO the system should do exactly what it in fact does. Notification while could be there, should definitely be configurable on/off because i for one would never want or need it.

FWIW, i used origin and ruler feature to place a "very" symetric circuit and find the centre an distances of components on my differential probe (symetric between +ve and -ve signal path), a few mils off should be no problem at all from technical point of view, but you know when people get too particular like me the problem arises but if diptrace team cannot listen or find the matter too trivial, then i have to live within the limitation, thats how the world works anyway

I would think that should be easily doable to the precision you require?

[arekm]

Unfortunately noticed that DipTrace 2.3 can't be installed on windows 8 (did upgrade from xp) due to some silly programmer check:

"ERROR

Novarm DipTrace (2.3) is not allowed to run on Win8 (6.2)

Setup aborted!"

Whoops, notified diptrace support.

In meantime DesignSpark PCB, Sprint-Layout, Eagle, Altium Viewer didn't have any problems with windows 8.

[Mechatrommer]

When you have created a footprint, the pad to pad spacings and other features of that footprint are fixed. The footprint has an insertion point that will fall on your current grid. All features of the footprint then fall on wherever they are in relation to the insertion point. There is no way around this.

should be like that! except diptrace gives more, we can snap the origin to the individual pad's center or coordinate, which is non aligned, not just the "insertion point"! later, insertion points of the other newly created or moved components in relation to the origin which is now refering to the off-the-grid pad will be you guess what? "off the grid" from previous components (insertion point) which used standard grid referenced earlier. your statement here supports my objective and requirement. i'm tired to argue any longer its useless imho, since its just a matter of diptrace team want to take it into account or not, all matters have been pointed out. cheers

[Kremmen]

Yes, yes. We are talking about the exact same thing but  i don't really see what your problem is. This is not a failure of the product - it is the nature of the thing. Unless you are asking for some kind of configuration safeguard that would prevent you from doing that. Which is kind of my point - if you don't want to botch the grid alignment, then just don't do it. You can define any selectable point as the grid origin, so if you pick one off-grid you get what you asked for. Duh?

[novarm44]

Unfortunately noticed that DipTrace 2.3 can't be installed on windows 8 (did upgrade from xp) due to some silly programmer check:

"ERROR

Novarm DipTrace (2.3) is not allowed to run on Win8 (6.2)

Setup aborted!"

It should be compatible with Windows 8 - we have tested installers on both Windows 8 - 32 bit and 64 bit. The problem may appear only if you are trying to run 64-bit installer on 32-bit version of Windows.

[arekm]

That was indeed 32 vs 64bit problem. Thanks!

[poorchava]

Two questions:
-is there some setting to display network names by default? Seems a bit cumbersome to enable displaying network name for every net, especially that you cannot do that by bulk, only one by one
-is there a way to set up how component informations are displayed? For example I usually want to display refdes and value, but every time i have to change it by hand.

[carveone]

Folder permissions:
C:\Program Files (x86)\DipTrace  : Everyone/Full Control.
Riiight...

Edit: On install, Diptrace adds an "Everyone:Full Control" ACL, recursively and explicitly (ie: it's not inherited) to every single file and folder in "My Documents". I'm speechless.

[Gridstop]

I really thought you must have been kidding about the permissions thing, or mistaken or something.... but good god.

On mine at least, the 'Everyone: Full Control' seemed to be applied to the root /Documents, not recursively to every file inside. (Thankfully, I can't image how long that would take to fix.)

However, in Program Files/Diptrace, it is set on *Every* file individually.

This is probably the most atrocious programming I've seen in years. Unbelievable.

You can fix it by setting the permissions properly (Full access to Admins and System, Users has read, list, read & execute) on the root folder and using icacls from an elevated command prompt:
icacls "C:\Program Files\DipTrace\*" /reset /T

You can do similar on your My Documents or anything else that it screwed up.

It works fine since there's actually NO REASON WHATSOEVER for anyone to need write access in the Program Files folder normally. Just save your projects and libraries in the My Documents/DipTrace, like you're supposed to.

[Mechatrommer]

just a minor GUI detail and CnC... when unrouting component, the "unroute traces" is at the top. when unrouting trace, the menu is at the below. i perpetually tried to search from top and bottom during practical usage, since they are closely related. my suggestion, move the "unroute trace" menu to the top same position as "unroute traces" for component or vice versa. please refer to attached image. keep up the good work.

[novarm44]

Folder permissions:
C:\Program Files (x86)\DipTrace  : Everyone/Full Control.
Riiight...

Edit: On install, Diptrace adds an "Everyone:Full Control" ACL, recursively and explicitly (ie: it's not inherited) to every single file and folder in "My Documents". I'm speechless.

We discovered that ourselves a few days ago from Arduino forum and seems found the reason of problem in installer settings, actually enabling that option was a fix requested by users - we will check all things more in-depth, turn it off for further updates and rebuild 2.3.0.2 installation packages shortly.

Regards,
Stanislav Ruev
DipTrace Team

[poorchava]

Huh, after using Diptrace for a longer while.... ME wantz m0ar HOTKEYZ!

And srsly, a hotkey for every option possible is an essential thing, also an ability to remap those hotkeys to your liking. That would tremendously decrease design time (less 'point-and-click').

[novarm44]

Configurable hot-keys are already in project management system (where we manage current tasks), so we will try to implement it soon.

p.s. Security issue already has been fixed and installer for 2.3.0.2 re-uploaded.

[novarm44]

p.s. Security issue already has been fixed and installer for 2.3.0.2 re-uploaded.

After changing that we got many user complains that files can not be executed or saved under user accounts in Win 64-bit. Also some libraries inconsistency issues. We decided to return things back, but now only new DipTrace folders have such permissions (not My Documents folder). Currently our programmers and sys admin trying to find the reason why it doesn't work on some 64-bit systems without this option (it works on our PCs with standard user account settings). We will probably work with users who have problems with access and try to fix this issue again when come from DesignCon. 

[poorchava]

First thing i ever do when installing Win7 is to disable UAC and similar stuff. I've had many cases when UAC blocked some process/operation during installation process to display a warning, and when user allowed the operation to continue, it somehow screwed up the installation process. Program seemed to have installed properly, but it malfunctioned later because of missing or inaccessible file. And UAC is worth shit to begin with. There are better tools for managing user privileges and protection from various threats.

I think that problems the users are having with installation without granting special permissions, comes from system misconfiguration (such as not nurning the UAC off)

[carveone]

At least Novarm are addressing the security issue. I suppose there can be issues with older Delphi libraries assuming things they shouldn't and causing permission issues (at least, that's what my brother tells me). I had one such issue with a Samsung utility on a samsung notebook. I asked them about it and got "Reinstall Windows" back. Thanks Samsung, you suck.

The answer was to use the Process Monitor utility from Sysinternals which show me that a file was being opened "Read/write" (it wasn't being written to, just read). I could then fix that myself with a permission change. Samsung weren't interested in the fix (just change the parameters to CreateFile).

The problem for novarm lies with institutions such as universities. If you want to get in on that action, the program must run as a limited user and needs to be structured so that installed libraries/documents/examples/scripts etc work pathwise. eg: Users documents directory first, then installation directory. User can alter their own libs, but not installed libs. Eagle works like this (but only after you beat your head off the wall for a bit first).

Edit: UAC may be annoying some times but it was designed to solve a single problem: The total refusal of developers, including those in MS, to conform to even the most basic file permission structure. "I'll write to the windows directory if I want to and if a anyone has an issue with this, too bad" was the attitude. In Unix, you cannot blithely write to files in /etc and then say it's someone else's fault. UAC has made developers care by getting their manager's attention - their app works but annoys the user. I'd say UAC will be phased out over the next 10 years.

[novarm44]

Sometimes throwing ''bricks in glass houses'' is not a good idea

If you will follow the thread you mentioned you will see what I mean in the posts after mine. Having full-time testers and engineers is the must for such kind of software. I believe you are great programmer and use latest tools, but in my opinion that is not only the thing you need to develop great and stable EDA. Anyway all these talks about nothing: my goal is building EDA company independent from myself in all aspects, your goal if I understand correctly, is making succeed EDA tool yourself and be proud of that. Wish all of us reach our goals.

[poorchava]

I think there is no point in comparing DEX with DipTrace. They obviously belong to different market segments.

DEX is on par with toys like ExpressPCB, KiCad, gEDA, DesignSpark, Freepcb and the like. They can be used to teach people the basics of pcb design, but nothing else. All of those of course have 3D preview and autorouter, which are basically useless for that kind of software. 3D mode's primary purpose is to verify collisions with mechanical parts in 3D cad (Catia, Solidworks etc.). this implies that the pcb cad has to be able to export ITEP and/or IGES format to be useful, otherwise it's only "+3 to wank factor". I know quite many pcb designers, and none of them uses autorouters/autoplacers. And we're talking Mentor/Cadence/Zuken level autorouters here.

Diptrace and Eagle i believe are meant for smaller businesses and hobby use, in other words people who cannot afford or don't need hyper expensive packages. DipTrace of course also has 3D mode (but pretty much useless thanks to lack of STEP/IGES import and export) and autorouter (which surprisingly can produce half-decent layout, which is an achievement for an autorouter). I also think that DipTrace developers are pretty responsive to feature requests, unlike Eagle or bigger players.

[Mechatrommer]

i believe novarm44 and ilija should really separate themself from one another. for a software developer position, they risk look unprofessional if they continue the tug war. let their product and support service tells the story.

[novarm44]

BTW video from DesignCon:
http://realtimewith.net/pages/rtwvprofile.cgi?rtwvcatid=13&rtwvid=2697

Agreed with Mechatrommer - that is already a long story (see who owns "diptrace" name at Yahoo! groups http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/diptrace/ ) and I don't understand some points of it myself.

[BravoV]

that is already a long story (see who owns "diptrace" name at Yahoo! groups http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/diptrace/ ) and I don't understand some points of it myself.

Actually that is a good for your business, cause sometimes it might mean the competing party's business is in bad shape, and desperately had to do that kind of dodgy campaigns.

Just stay mature & sincere when it comes to deal with this kind of thingy, focus on making better product & support, "potential" customers and existing ones are not blind.