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Wow, this is amazingIdeally the schematic software should allow you to quickly and easily easily move pins around on a symbol to make it neater - I'm not aware of any tools that allow you to do this
Altium. Since version 11.something. Simply double click a symbol, untick the 'lock pins' checkbox and you can move em around. you can even rename or renumber pins , i use this all the time -
All PCB packages need to have this. Dammit f_e, I'm usually perfectly happy to use KiCad, but every time you start describing Altium I need a napkin...
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Wow, this is amazing
Wait until you see AD 14 in a few weeks. That will be jaw dropping and eye popping .... We ( the silicon valley users group) got an overview last week at the Marriott hotel here. (with an excellent lunch buffet to boot).
It gets some capabilities that pushes Altium into a whole new category of PCB tools... yes, these are back to the core of schematic and PCB updates. They are getting serious ...
To paraphrase Dr. Brown : When this thing hits 88 miles an hour you are going to see some serious sh...
The first step has been taken in AD14 with a hint to the future : they have an Eagle importer (sch and brd) in AD14 ... and other importers are in the works... hint hint...
Early next year (target February) another big game changer is coming with the new pricing model... with a few 'entry levels' ... hint hint
And that's all i'm going to say about that. Go read that shareholder overview that was posted in a topic here a few weeks ago and connect the dots... -
Ideally the schematic software should allow you to quickly and easily easily move pins around on a symbol to make it neater - I'm not aware of any tools that allow you to do this
Altium. Since version 11.something. Simply double click a symbol, untick the 'lock pins' checkbox and you can move em around. you can even rename or renumber pins , i use this all the time
I just fired up DXP (AD 8.x) and that has it. DXP was probably where it was introduced. That's around 10 years ago! -
Mother of God that is one horrid analog schematic. What is with these people who think schematic pages are expensive?
They are. -
Mother of God that is one horrid analog schematic. What is with these people who think schematic pages are expensive?
They are.
575 for sch +pcb with 99 sheets of glorified pencil and paper . Here i was thinking eagle was cheap ... as in like 199$ ...
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Mother of God that is one horrid analog schematic. What is with these people who think schematic pages are expensive?
They are. 575 for sch +pcb with 99 sheets of glorified pencil and paper . Here i was thinking eagle was cheap ... as in like 199$ ...
Even the hobby package is pretty expensive. I could get them hundreds (potentially many thousands..) of sales of that package at $50. At $169 with no way to recoup it? Not likely. -
I attached an example of an , in my opinion, -clean- schematic. ( i drew it according to my rules , which are based on what i see in other professional schematics ( like the older HP schematics, some Philips service manuals for their hi-end tv and audio gear, and others))
It's only one page from a larger design but it gives you an idea of what should be done.
- The incoming supplies , their filtering and decoupling are in one spot.
- A customized symbol with spread and reordered pins to avoid wire spaghetti. (David was right. This was made in DXP .. so they have had reordering since over 10 years ago... )
- Attention to the positioning of parts , designators and other decals.
- Correct, and only allowed, usage of diagonal wires to avoid 'spaghetti' (in the combiner hybrid) and to indicate Kelvin connections. (on the IC pins)
- no ambiguous cross junctions, only T-junctions.
Schematics like this are easy to follow. There is no guessing what is wired to what else, and any special things are immediately visible ( like the double diagonal twist in the hybrid splitter.)
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Thats some good news. I signed up for the preview presentation on the 20th... the email said it was about vault management/cloud BS but this could be cool.
Wow, this is amazing
Wait until you see AD 14 in a few weeks. That will be jaw dropping and eye popping .... We ( the silicon valley users group) got an overview last week at the Marriott hotel here. (with an excellent lunch buffet to boot).
It gets some capabilities that pushes Altium into a whole new category of PCB tools... yes, these are back to the core of schematic and PCB updates. They are getting serious ...
To paraphrase Dr. Brown : When this thing hits 88 miles an hour you are going to see some serious sh...
The first step has been taken in AD14 with a hint to the future : they have an Eagle importer (sch and brd) in AD14 ... and other importers are in the works... hint hint...
Early next year (target February) another big game changer is coming with the new pricing model... with a few 'entry levels' ... hint hint
And that's all i'm going to say about that. Go read that shareholder overview that was posted in a topic here a few weeks ago and connect the dots... -
I would like to see more "best drawn" examples or best-practice examples if people have them. Cheers
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i just posted one 5 messages ago. has a pdf attachment. go look at it.
here it is once more :
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I have a book call "Experiments with EPROMs" by Dave Prochnow. The schematics in there are just rectangles representing pin-outs of ICs and their connections to each other without any logic symbol! Horrid - dunno why I kept it!
Also I once had to fault find a Tiawanese made PSU using a schematic that used no recognisable convention and I actually blew up the damn board out of misunderstanding the diagram! -
i just posted one 5 messages ago. has a pdf attachment. go look at it.
here it is once more :
Thanks, it was your post that prompted me to ask for more examples! -
I would like to see more "best drawn" examples or best-practice examples if people have them. Cheers
Have a look at the ones for older HP test gear.
Also, the schematics in this Hitachi scope service manual are good. What I really like is that component numbering has been done on a clustering basis, so that R84x will be in the same block at TR84x and C84x. Saves a lot of hunting when fault finding.
http://skory.z-net.hu/alkatresz/hitachi_V-211-212-222-422_service_manual.pdf
I've worked on one job recently where the schematic was 25 pages long which used a similar principal. All ref des were four digits, with the first two being the sheet number. -
Here is a schematic I drew for an isolated DC-DC converter. Not finished yet.
(prototype electric drivetrain.)
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But that schematic is ALSO a schoolbook example of how NOT to draw schematics. they just had to cram everything on a 11x17 ...
Most Crowded:
Scarily, I knew exactly what that diagram was. A few months ago I dissected and simulated the analogue input to see just how bad it's performance was. Despite being crowded it is at least quite readable. Unlike the increasing number of corporate engineers who insist on putting one IC per page. Aaargh!
split that sucker in an analog section and a digital section. a nice bus interconnects the two.
and for 'f#$% sake : make CUSTOM symbols to get rid of the wire spaghetti. make little block diagrams inside the ic symbols to show what is inside.
Anyone who can't follow that schematic should probably take up fishing instead.
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Here is a schematic I drew for an isolated DC-DC converter. Not finished yet.
(prototype electric drivetrain.)
At a glance it looks good to me.
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Here is a schematic I drew for an isolated DC-DC converter. Not finished yet.
pretty clean but there is some small improvement possible.
(prototype electric drivetrain.)
r3/d5/q2/r4/r5/c21 for example.
if you move the FB pin from the left to the righ and install it above the gate drive) of the mosfet ( pin 16) and make the regulator chip taller
you can tap the r3 node at pin 2 of q1
the base of q2 is tapped just right of z1
this removes 4 crossing wires completely.
rotate r22 horizontaland to the right . removes a crossing
rtate c22 to the right. rotate r9 and c24 horizontal and to the right . you can now connect right side of c22 r9 c24 together and plonk to ground with 1 power object.
lifting the wire from inbetween the fuse and d1 : see how it now goes down and crosse two hirozntal traces, then goes left and makes another corss. by taking the horizontal section and pullin it above r2 you eliminate 3 line crossing.
i'd say overall this is a clean drawing. i wuold clean out the stuff i mentioned above and i would line up the optocouplers so the split in the optos coincides vertically with the core of the transformer.
A vertical dotted line then shows the isolation barrier.
i like the callouts with some voltages.
question : i see where LB+ of your regulator is connected (between C8 and C9 . i can't find the +5VP though ...
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it's not a matter of following. it is too cramped , there is wire spaghetti. it overwhelms at first sight .
Anyone who can't follow that schematic should probably take up fishing instead. -
I would like to see more "best drawn" examples or best-practice examples if people have them. Cheers
Just a few.
http://www.users.on.net/~glenk/ddac/ClockGeneratorBoard2.pdf
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/home-brew-analog-computer-system/?action=dlattach;attach=35348
http://www.users.on.net/~glenk/200vbuck/200vbuck.pdf
http://www.users.on.net/~glenk/thd/autotune.pdf
http://www.users.on.net/~glenk/asamk1/vga2.gif
Dunno about pretensions of "best drawn", but I think they are pretty legible. I like to print the larger, more complex schematic to large sheets. I loathe excessively broken down schematics printed to multiple A4 pages.
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most of those are legible and clean , but the large one suffer form the 'let's cram it all on one page' disease. (amplifier and that THD system)
break it in manageable chunks. -
If the components can all fit into a single PCB, then they can all fit into a single sheet
A complex, single board schematic prints out nicely to an A3 or an A2, both of which fold up nice an neat A4-size for filing. If I have to fault find something that I haven't looked at for a long time, a large, complete schematic folded out on the bench is much better than an A4 booklet which one has to continuously flick through tracing out nets.
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If the components can all fit into a single PCB, then they can all fit into a single sheet
I've worked on a board with 5000 components on it. I'm glad that the schematic was printed on more than one sheet. -
Well, my half serious comment was in reference to the schematics I posted.
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On the topic of badly drawn schematics, some of the worst are from the vintage era of radio. There seemed to be a phase where the draftsman would use his stencil to draw in the major components, evenly spread out across the page, and then proceed to wire everything up. One rainy weekend a while ago I got fed up tracing the vintage wiring schematic spaghetti for some old units I was working on restoring, and re-drew them a bit neater:
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On the topic of badly drawn schematics, some of the worst are from the vintage era of radio. There seemed to be a phase where the draftsman would use his stencil to draw in the major components, evenly spread out across the page, and then proceed to wire everything up.
At a time when there wasn't CAD, not surprising; the alternative of erasing many times or getting a new sheet and starting over is not really practical. Some of the early TV schematics weren't too bad, however.