PCB design software with components autoplacers.

[nigelwright7557]

Skipping undo, a basic feature back in the early seventies, makes your software worth less than $0. You'd have to pay me to even think of using it.

Undo requires a massive amount of memory or hard disc space and slows down the software and thrashes the pc.
Its completely unnecesary as all you have to do is reload in the file if you mess up.
So long as you regularly save progress it works fine.

If your making a lot of mistakes then maybe your in the wrong job ?

[Zucca]

nigelwright7557 what is good, nice and cool for you and your customers could be bad for the rest.
I admire you started to code your own EDA SW, and you did what was best for you.

To summarize your "taste" is very special, if you want to sell more you should consider to implement feature that the majority of others EDA have.

It's remarkable the EEVBlog reaction: still a lot of constructive criticism/comments if you shave off some irritation.

Best wishes for the future!

[Mechatrommer]

Skipping undo, a basic feature back in the early seventies, makes your software worth less than $0. You'd have to pay me to even think of using it.

Undo requires a massive amount of memory or hard disc space and slows down the software and thrashes the pc.
Its completely unnecesary as all you have to do is reload in the file if you mess up.
So long as you regularly save progress it works fine.

If your making a lot of mistakes then maybe your in the wrong job ?

ok ok your excuses is granted

[Black Phoenix]

Nothing against the initial OP, yes, he develop a software that in his own way is better that all the others because it fits his needs and quirks.

But as someone who wants to sell something, as stated, you have to cater to every kind of user, from the experience to the newbie. Even if your own way is easy that doesn't mean your way is the only one right.

Just look at Windows 8 vs Windows 8.1: Start Menu. Microsoft removed, everyone complained and even installed programs that would install a Windows start menu as Windows 7.

Was the right way in the mind of Microsoft? Yes, but the users didn't want to change what they are already used to to something not that intuitive. So that they released Windows 8.1 with the Start Menu.

Sometimes changing things just to change and be different is not the right way. The same applies with all the issues from the users from this forum and their constructive opinion. No one is wanting you to not have success in your endeavour, no in reality everyone wants your program to get better and probably support you if that happens.

But your defensive position and like someone is attacking your work and put you down is not helping. Probably turn down a notch, be humble, understand the position you are, as a seller and developer and listen to the comments. Why reinvent the wheel if it works the way it works?

[exe]

If you lived a bit closer I would have come round and showed you how to use it because you are clearly clueless !

You can record a video.

Concerning UI, the reason I use DipTrace (and I paid for it) instead of kicad or any other free tool is usability. In virtually no time I was able to get the result I wanted. Of course there were topics that I wasn't able to discover myself, so I did have to Google it and to read the manual. But I had a smooth start because it works mostly as expected.  Not that "wire vs net" garbage in some software where wires don't do anything

So, there are standard UI patterns for many common actions, and they make adopting new software much easier. I'd say it's not worth avoid them nowadays, because you'll have this conversation with every potential customer. For hardcore user just let them redefine shortcuts, etc.

PS I hope it's genuine thread, not trolling from OP. It also would be great to clearly indicate affiliation. It's a bad promotion when people pretend they are "happy independent users", while in fact they try to sell it.

PPS I'm also not sure what's the deal with this software. It's super cheap. Are you doing it for fun? I'd suggest opening sources and create a community, but not sure if this is going to work. It will be hard to compete with kicad...

[nctnico]

My feedback is based on how easy i find it to pick up a new tool. but, my patience is very thin. I expect tools to have a basic 'common' feel with other programs. ( like screen navigation, object selection , copy paste etc. )
Those are basic operations that work identical irrespective of what the software does or what platform it runs on.

This is precisely where you go wrong. Among CAD packages with various backgrounds and legacies things just work different. And that doesn't mean they are bad or non-productive; it is what it is and the designers choose to implement things the way they deemed best.

[nctnico]

Skipping undo, a basic feature back in the early seventies, makes your software worth less than $0. You'd have to pay me to even think of using it.

Undo requires a massive amount of memory or hard disc space and slows down the software and thrashes the pc.
Its completely unnecesary as all you have to do is reload in the file if you mess up.
So long as you regularly save progress it works fine.

Sorry but this is complete and utter BS! People make mistakes and having an undo / redo is essential to make a tool productive.

[exe]

This is precisely where you go wrong.

I don't think an opinion can be "wrong".

it is what it is and the designers choose to implement things the way they deemed best.

From what I read there were no UX employed. It's just an opinion of the main developer. Who is, apparently, very opinionated . The problem with opinionated UIs is that either you like it, or hate it. Most often it's the latter. Hello eagle, hello kicad.

I'd say there is enough opinionated and incomplete EDA on the market. I want a simple one, the one straight-forward to use based on best practices and common sense, with undo, pan&zoom with mouse, and wires remaining connected when I move components. Am I asking too much already? Same for spice simulators. Of course, people who've been using these tools for decades will deny any usability problems, because it's all hard-wired in their brains.

[legacy]

Same for spice simulators.

Tina Design (mine is v8)! It costs 500 euro for the professional license, but for me it's an awesome tool!
There is an example package (60 euro) which contains a lot of training materials.

[Daixiwen]

Undo requires a massive amount of memory or hard disc space and slows down the software and thrashes the pc.

Sure, if you completely brute force it and store a copy of the complete design each time an operation is done. But if you code it properly and only store a diff of the state before and after each operation, the undo functionality won't use that much resources.
Everyone does mistakes now and then, and I don't save my design every 5 seconds. Having to revert to the last save of the file is really a non starter for me too.

[exe]

Same for spice simulators.

Tina Design (mine is v8)! It costs 500 euro for the professional license, but for me it's an awesome tool!
There is an example package (60 euro) which contains a lot of training materials.

I agree, I used to use TINA-TI, afaik based on v8 too, was... okayish, definetely easier to use than LTSpice. V10, afaik, had quite a lot of bugs (not sure how many of them due to the fact that I ran it on Linux), then they had v11. I bought their cloud access, but it was horribly slow and buggy (tried in multiple browsers). UI had horrible flaws, like to simulate circuit one had to draw it in editor, save it, then open in the viewer, and it was taking tens of second (and what if I don't want to save it?). Compare to instance simulation in their desktop software. Once or twice it was down. So, I used it only a couple of times, I'm glad it was cheap.

I wanted to buy v11 standalone version, but somehow pricing for the modules was always a bit higher than I was willing to pay.

PS Can't check their prices now, the site is hooribly slow, this page is taking forever to load: http://www.designsoftware.com/orders/order.php

[Mr. Scram]

nigelwright7557 what is good, nice and cool for you and your customers could be bad for the rest.
I admire you started to code your own EDA SW, and you did what was best for you.

To summarize your "taste" is very special, if you want to sell more you should consider to implement feature that the majority of others EDA have.

It's remarkable the EEVBlog reaction: still a lot of constructive criticism/comments if you shave off some irritation.

Best wishes for the future!

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of irritation. People seem to get upset when things don't adhere to their expectations.

[hammy]

[...] People seem to get upset when things don't adhere to their expectations.

This is true for both parties in this discussion.
If you watch the website and the software it is obvious nigelwright7557 made this software the way he likes it. And a quick search brings to light he is developing the software since years and never "modernized" the UI. It is not hard to understand this is on purpose.
He just advertised the software and never asked for advice. He likes it the way it is and he offers his software for a very small price of 5 GPB. You can buy it or leave it. Don't pester him with unsolicited advice. He is just a guy who loves his software and want do share it. And he is proud of his software. Give him a break!

 

[Mr. Scram]

This is true for both parties in this discussion.
If you watch the website and the software it is obvious nigelwright7557 made this software the way he likes it. And a quick search brings to light he is developing the software since years and never "modernized" the UI. It is not hard to understand this is on purpose.
He just advertised the software and never asked for advice. He likes it the way it is and he offers his software for a very small price of 5 GPB. You can buy it or leave it. Don't pester him with unsolicited advice. He is just a guy who loves his software and want do share it. And he is proud of his software. Give him a break!

 

If you weren't allowed to be a slight oddball with strong convictions this forum wouldn't be well frequented at all.   Discussion is fine, but some seem to inject a rather unnecessary undertone of annoyance. There's no need to be terse, we can all disagree in peace.

[free_electron]

Copy and paste is done by selecting the area you want to copy and paste. I think its right at the end of the help manual.

Please do search the help manual for the words 'copy' or 'paste' .

The only place 'copy' is found:

-Copy layer to all tracks – copies layer of current track to all tracks.
-Copy current pad to all pads – copies layer of current pad to all pads.
-This module creates a parts list file and outputs the file to the base directory i.e. c:\PCBCAD51\mypcb.pls you can copy this file into word-pad or word and print it out.
-This module renumbers the symbols in the schematic and PCB in order across and down the schematic and PCB. You can renumber the schematic and copy to the PCB, renumber the PCB and copy to the schematic, renumber a schematic before a PCB exists or renumber a PCB before the schematic exists.

The only place 'Paste' is found:

'nowhere'

Now do you understand the problem and my frustration ? The manual does not talk about copy and paste.

You have to set up blockmode otherwise I don't know what area wants copying.

i figured that out.
But blockmode is rectangular only.
How do i make polygonal selections , or remove 1 element in the middle of a block ? or select 5 random parts somewhere ? or just parts only , no wires ?

I had completely forgotten about the schematic moving all disconnected lines to a deleted component to bottom left hand side corner.
I always delete the tracks first before deleting the component.
However, I can see how some people would be put off by this.

That would be counterproductive. Example: (See attached image)
i make a schematic where i have a chip driving 16 outputs. The inputs for this device are SDA SCL and 2 address pins. I want to repeat his block 3 times.
i would draw it once , select everything EXCEPT the wires and labels going to the three address pins. copy paste paste paste . now only wire the address pins so they are unique.
Selected net labels need to travel with the copies and be unmodified ! in your case the repeat function destroys them as they become random assigned net names.

To make this non rectangular selection:
draw a rectangle that encloses all parts ( uncluding the two ground objects.)
Now shift-left mouse button click on the two elements i do not want. This removes them from the selected group. If i want to add something to the group : shift-click again. The shift-left mouse acts like a toggle switch : add or remove from group. It controls a boolean flag on all elements that says ' you are in a group selection'. when a copy paste operation is done : all elements that have the flag set are duplicated.

non rectangular selections are very important. Every software can do that. Excel allows you to select random cells , Word allows you to select random elements , Powerpoint can do it. All schematic/PCB software i know can do it.

So I spent 10 minutes tonight fixing it.
Not only that but the software now allows laying new components over lines and it automatically connects to them.
It only needs to do this for component repeat, new component and block repeat.

Good ! thanks for that. Keep in mind that, while i may sound grumpy, my feedback is honest and trying to give you idea's for improvement.

undo

that is not right.
undo does not take disk space or memory. That Nova computer had all of 32K core memory and a whopping 50 Megabyte disk pack. It drove 2 screens ( one graphical , one text) , a digitzer , a drawing board and a keypad. Intel did the layout of the 8008 microprocessor on that machine. It had undo ...

All you need to store is what got removed / added in a stack.

[free_electron]

My feedback is based on how easy i find it to pick up a new tool. but, my patience is very thin. I expect tools to have a basic 'common' feel with other programs. ( like screen navigation, object selection , copy paste etc. )
Those are basic operations that work identical irrespective of what the software does or what platform it runs on.

This is precisely where you go wrong. Among CAD packages with various backgrounds and legacies things just work different. And that doesn't mean they are bad or non-productive; it is what it is and the designers choose to implement things the way they deemed best.

Basic operations like copy paste , selecting/deselecting, work the same irrespective of programs. CTRL-C Ctrl-V Ctrl-X are universal in the  windows world. same thing with shift-drag , shift-click. Works even on a mac ( ok there it is command c command v ) but all programs use that combination.
that is what i am getting at. It does no good to make these basic things totally different. That is just a huge learning curve. ( in the sense  i need to put effort to find what it is and remember it for this one program. If all software starts implementing their own copy paste shortcuts life woudl be hell... )

[Warhawk]

Does it run under TempleOS?

[nigelwright7557]

Basic operations like copy paste , selecting/deselecting, work the same irrespective of programs. CTRL-C Ctrl-V Ctrl-X are universal in the  windows world. same thing with shift-drag , shift-click. Works even on a mac ( ok there it is command c command v ) but all programs use that combination.
that is what i am getting at. It does no good to make these basic things totally different. That is just a huge learning curve. ( in the sense  i need to put effort to find what it is and remember it for this one program. If all software starts implementing their own copy paste shortcuts life woudl be hell... )

But you have to select an area first. How do  I know which items are selected otherwise ?
Simply pressing control c and v would copy the lot as its not selective enough.

PCBCAD software can be complex and there is not a lot you can do to fix that.

[nigelwright7557]

Does it run under TempleOS?

Runs under Windows only.
I am told it works under Wine.

[nigelwright7557]

undo

that is not right.
undo does not take disk space or memory. That Nova computer had all of 32K core memory and a whopping 50 Megabyte disk pack. It drove 2 screens ( one graphical , one text) , a digitzer , a drawing board and a keypad. Intel did the layout of the 8008 microprocessor on that machine. It had undo ...

All you need to store is what got removed / added in a stack.

So where do you save the changes ?
The only way to save i.e. tracks would be to save the previous tracks array to a file or to memory.
On a large pcb you could be talking mega bytes of memory.
And that's just for tracks, what about text, components etc ?

[james_s]

If Undo requires massive amounts of memory or slows things down then something is seriously wrong with the architecture. I cannot think of a single piece of productivity software that I have ever used in my life that lacks at least a basic one level undo/redo function. Every EDA that I've used has multi-level undo/redo, it's an absolutely essential feature that has been standard for decades.

[Mr. Scram]

So where do you save the changes ?
The only way to save i.e. tracks would be to save the previous tracks array to a file or to memory.
On a large pcb you could be talking mega bytes of memory.
And that's just for tracks, what about text, components etc ?

Undo should only be saving a diff. If you're copying your full dataset for every mutation you're asking for trouble.

[nigelwright7557]

So where do you save the changes ?
The only way to save i.e. tracks would be to save the previous tracks array to a file or to memory.
On a large pcb you could be talking mega bytes of memory.
And that's just for tracks, what about text, components etc ?

Undo should only be saving a diff. If you're copying your full dataset for every mutation you're asking for trouble.

What if say someone removed 90% of the tracks that were 10 megabytes ?
Then they press undo, those 9 megabytes need to come from somewhere.

A simple single or double level undo wouldn't be too bad to do but an infinite one would seriously affect performance.

[free_electron]

Basic operations like copy paste , selecting/deselecting, work the same irrespective of programs. CTRL-C Ctrl-V Ctrl-X are universal in the  windows world. same thing with shift-drag , shift-click. Works even on a mac ( ok there it is command c command v ) but all programs use that combination.
that is what i am getting at. It does no good to make these basic things totally different. That is just a huge learning curve. ( in the sense  i need to put effort to find what it is and remember it for this one program. If all software starts implementing their own copy paste shortcuts life woudl be hell... )

But you have to select an area first. How do  I know which items are selected otherwise ?
Simply pressing control c and v would copy the lot as its not selective enough.

PCBCAD software can be complex and there is not a lot you can do to fix that.

of course there needs to be something in the selection buffer.

The issue is : manipulating that buffer.
In pcbcad51 that buffer is a simple rectangle. anything that touches it is included.

My claim is : that is not sufficient for modern software. i want a mechanism to allows me to add / remove items from the buffer at random. Any program can do that these days.
typically it is done by using shift-click.
so i case of pcbcad :
f9 , click top left , click bottom right. that performs block selection.
it woudl expect there to be ( either on the right-click menu) a function 'add to selection'. if i activate that function i can now click on awire , symbol or any other object on screen , and that gets added to the already selected block.
sem thing for removing. a function 'remove from selection'.
better yet : no functions that needs 'activation'

Selecting items : position mouse at first corner. hold left mouse button down , move to next corner , let go of mouse button. anything in that are from corner1 to corner 2 now becomes selected. no need to invoke 'block mode'. the operation mouse-down, move,mouse-up becomes block mode.
adding / removing an item : hold shift key , click on object. if object is not selected : add it to selection. if object is in selection : remove it from selection.

This is how many programs work when it comes to selecting items. even the windows file explorer works that way. excel does too . this is a common way of selecting things.

It does no good for commonly used tasks to have a completely different way , and then have to do many more operations to get where you want to be.

[nctnico]

So where do you save the changes ?
The only way to save i.e. tracks would be to save the previous tracks array to a file or to memory.
On a large pcb you could be talking mega bytes of memory.
And that's just for tracks, what about text, components etc ?

Undo should only be saving a diff. If you're copying your full dataset for every mutation you're asking for trouble.

What if say someone removed 90% of the tracks that were 10 megabytes ?
Then they press undo, those 9 megabytes need to come from somewhere.

A simple single or double level undo wouldn't be too bad to do but an infinite one would seriously affect performance.

And how is that a problem? It will always be quicker compared to redrawing 90% of the tracks. Besides that technology has caught up; memory and storage space are cheap.