pcb-rnd release 1.2.4

[ScribblesOnNapkins]

Hi,

A few days ago we released 1.2.4 which adds some new features. The most notable are...
* Eagle Binary Format - pcb-rnd can now read eagle files in the older binary format. We have a few weeks of testing time in on each release but if you find anything wrong with this please report it to us. We are working on exporting this format as well.
* Protel Autotrax/Easytrax Format - pcb-rnd can now import and export this format.
* Subcircuits - You can now draw a bunch of objects and group them as a subcircuit. This is one of a series of additions in our effort to target microwave/rf users. The next step is making subcircuits have their own distinct terminals and etc in netlist. (I would love it if people would test this but not use it in production until we have more done.)
* xy_exporter - now supports templates (we have a few users interested in using commercial pnp services)

Various bugs were also fixed of course.

To be honest I am more excited about our next 2 or 3 releases than this one not just because of subcircuits but other things (yet to be announced) as well.

[VinzC]

I just saw this one today and have compiled it on my Gentoo machine — FTR Gentoo is now my main distribution on my laptop and I believe it's going to last (no NetworkManager, no systemd, no pulseaudio, the way *I* want it). I'm a bit surprised by the user interface — read "curious about it". I certainly will give it a go soon... probably after I have checked/written an ebuild for it (not a simple task, I expect, but I want to do it right). I'm still using gEDA pcb as my main PCB tool but I have planned to make the switch.

One thing I've just noticed (sorry to be late if it's no news) is the parametric footprint. At first I'm positively impressed. One comment I'd throw is to use the wheel wherever you have figures (numbers) to input. Take connectors, for instance: you have two numbers to enter, nx and ny, IIRC. You can only use the keyboard there. It is a huge plus if you can also use the wheel — I don't use the keyboard exclusively, like many others, I'm sure. I also think interface controls that use the wheel also allow the cursor UP and DOWN keys to work as well.

Just my 2¢.

Otherwise keep up the good work  !

[xaxaxa]

I'm a long time user of geda and decided to give -rnd a try, but my first impression was how laggy the UI is compared to pcb; just zooming in and out feels significantly slower, and many operations (such as floodfill and DRC) causes much more flicker than before; any ideas why this is?

[ScribblesOnNapkins]

What version of pcb and pcb hid are you using? Which HID are you using in pcb-rnd? It might be that you were using a version/configuration of pcb with out gl support and a configuration of pcb-rnd with gl. If you don't have hardware acceleration for gl this can cause a significant slow down.

Do you have layer compositing turned on? That can indicate which HID you are using.

What release of pcb-rnd are you running? We had some stuff in svn during development that was painfully slow but that should be fixed by now.

[ScribblesOnNapkins]

Incidentally we did another release today 1.2.6. I am starting another thread on it.

[legacy]

has anyone already created a Gentoo Overaly/ebuild for pcb-rnd?

[ScribblesOnNapkins]

A few people have worked on ebuilds. Igor2 is going to ping them to see what the progress is like so far.

I am also a gentoo user but other aspects of the project keep me too busy to be doing packaging. Here is what I do...

\svn svn://repo.hu/pcb-rnd/trunk
cd trunk
./configure
make
make test
sudo make install

and if you want to remove it
sudo make uninstall