DEX eval by free_electron

[ElektroQuark]

Iliya,

What free_electron is doing for you FOR FREE would cost a fortune if you outsource it.
He is helping you to make DEX a SUCCESSFULL PCB software.
Don't miss the chance.

P.S
Successful = lots of money

P.S 2

Thank you for the evaluation, free_electron

[firewalker]

C'mon free_electron !!!

Install a damn camera and a screen capture software! 

Alexander.

[BravoV]

Iliya,

What free_electron is doing for you FOR FREE would cost a fortune if you outsource it.
He is helping you to make DEX a SUCCESSFULL PCB software.
Don't miss the chance.

P.S
Successful = lots of money

P.S 2

Thank you for the evaluation, free_electron

If I were Iliya, free_electron will get a free and life time license instantly for the evaluation and "feedbacks" that he made, definitely worth it.

[EEVblog]

This is quite funny 
Two competing personalities that I suspect will only ever 
I can remember having similar battles with Iliya maybe a decade ago on another forum, and I think Iliya accused me of working for Altium and being a stooge or some such
Ironically I did end up working for Altium many years later! 

I second the other, Free_electrons feedback is the best Iliya will ever get.

[free_electron]

C'mon free_electron !!!

Install a damn camera and a screen capture software! 

Alexander.

But no microphone.. you don't want to hear my swearing barrage ...

[SeanB]

Why not, how many here will understand Belgian or Dutch........... English swearing has very little range, but other languages can be more expressive.

[ludzinc]

Here is another thing i 'd like to see

i have placed 5 resistors on the schematic. i select 3 of them (shift-click) if i go to the parameter editor and change value to 1K only one of em changes. it should change for ALL selected parts. it is illogical that this changes only for one of em. there are 3 selected !

another thing that would be nice is the ability to quickly clone a part. let's say i have aresistor already on the schematic and the footprint and value are already set right. i need another one just like it. doing for example shift -drag  ( hold shift key , point mouse to existing part, press and hold left mouse key while maintaining shift held ) that 'clones the part being pointed at so i can immediately drop that where i need it.
now every time i need to go to the library panel and drag one from there. one that doesn't have the settings already in it ... so i need to redo that...

that shift-drag should work for any object. components, power objects , ports .. even a selected group should be cloned like that.

that speeds up drawing tremendously.

I *LOVE* shift-drag cloning in Altium.  But I'd be happy with ctrl-c, ctrl-v on selected items.  No need to 100% replicate Altium

[ludzinc]

Must also say a BIG THANKS to both Ilya and Free_electron.

Firstly big props to Ilya for supporting the community.

Secondly, big props to Free_electron.  With 3 kids and a full time job I hardly get the time to do my stuff, yet alone learn new software.  I am lucky enough to have access to Altium through work, but would love to  share my hobby stuff as open source.

However if buggy software makes me less effective, makes me take a lot longer to produce my toys, fergeddaboudit. 

[nctnico]

I *LOVE* shift-drag cloning in Altium.  But I'd be happy with ctrl-c, ctrl-v on selected items.  No need to 100% replicate Altium

I agree. I have used Altium for 2 boards (I admit: this was over a decade ago) and in both cases I needed the manual on my lap to be able to use the software. IOW: It is not difficult to make an electronics CAD program which works more intuitive than Altium.

[Monkeh]

All serious CAD software will have a steep learning curve. It's easy to forget that once you're used to using one piece of software.

What matters is whether the learning curve is worth it.

[firewalker]

free_electron, I would love to force you to a system transitioning for KDE4 to KDE5...

 

Alexander.

[mikeselectricstuff]

All serious CAD software will have a steep learning curve. It's easy to forget that once you're used to using one piece of software.

What matters is whether the learning curve is worth it.

The thing I liked about PCAD (actually it was still called ACCEL back then) was it was very intuitive, and used Windows conventions wherever possible instead of inheriting quirks from older DOS based systems. I'm still using it and have very rarely needed to look at any documentation.

[ElektroQuark]

About SpaceMouses (Navigator, etc)
SolveSpace is a little opensource 3D CAD software that is compatible with 3DConnexion stuff. It's only an exe, and it fits a floppy

[EEVblog]

Firstly big props to Ilya for supporting the community.

Totally, this is an excellent move, the more competition out there the better 

There however is one big problem with AutoTRAX, and I've said this many times before over the last decade or so, and it hasn't changed now:
Now matter how good the program is or gets, the main issue with mainstream community uptake of it will be IMO because it is obviously a "one-man-band" package.
Of course it is awesome that Iliya has developed this entirely himself 
But any serious user is going to be (rightly I think) concerned about committing to a non open-source package written by one person. Anything could happen to leave the user stranded with an orphaned package.
And Iliya seems to make no effort to hide that it's a one-man-band product either. It would be much nicer it he gave it a bigger company feel (even if still secretly written by one guy). You could have "Bruce from product support", "Wally from accounts", "Jill from marketing", "Dick from library support" etc
Heck, when Nick Martin was CEO of Altium, he still cut code on a daily basis 30 years after founding it and with 400 other employees.

[nctnico]

Firstly big props to Ilya for supporting the community.

Totally, this is an excellent move, the more competition out there the better 

There however is one big problem with AutoTRAX, and I've said this many times before over the last decade or so, and it hasn't changed now:
Now matter how good the program is or gets, the main issue with mainstream community uptake of it will be IMO because it is obviously a "one-man-band" package.

I don't see that as a disadvantage. As long as a software package works OK (IOW the bugs are manageable) I don't see the need for updates or support. Regarding DEX it is a pity it seems to be a Windows only package. Judging from the poll in another thread about 30% of the EEVblog visitors seems not to use Windows.

[mswhin63]

I only noticed this thread, there is a lot to read through to get an idea. I have been using the software for a while and am quite happy. I noticed a lot of comments from free_electron. A lot of his criticism seems to be on the part editor which I do not have a problem with. There are some library parts that look a bit odd but I don't use them anyway.

One thing that would probably fix a lot of problems noticed is to switch off the "snap to grid". That is the major cause of free_electrons problems. I don't like to criticize any software unless I have had a chance to use it for a while and the big thing I noticed with all software is it takes time to get used to using it. All software is the same.

Eagle took me ages to create a part, Dex a bit less and Altium is a bloody nightmare but one you have spent some time on it operations things go very smoothly. From the manner of some people they have been stuck using their own software preference for a very long time and hell bent on changing.
(Reminds of a recent thread and video on Free Energy) Hmmmmmm notice the similarities.

Good luck with your package Iliya and I know that many more update will come. Maybe if you think there is an opportunity to get other people to assist with design then maybe not a bad idea Dave.

Me personally I hope to get a chance to use all CAD software packages so that it is possible to integrate into any companies requirements for circuit design.

[janoc]

About SpaceMouses (Navigator, etc)
SolveSpace is a little opensource 3D CAD software that is compatible with 3DConnexion stuff. It's only an exe, and it fits a floppy

Writing a driver for a Navigator is fairly trivial, so if this sort of thing is a requirement (I have never thought about using mine for PCB design, but I am not an EE), it shouldn't be hard to do. Even if you don't want to use the official SDK (which, IMO, sucks), they use a bog standard HID protocol that has been reverse engineered long time ago - I wrote Linux and VRPN drivers for these things.

[Mechatrommer]

I only noticed this thread, there is a lot to read through to get an idea. I have been using the software for a while and am quite happy.

so mr trax guy, can you help mr creator for us to figure out few simple things (that he willingly or unwillingly unable to answer)....

1) as per fe: how to turn autowiring off in schematic editor? (mentioned at least twice here)
2) as per me: how to activate 45 degrees routing during pcb editing the nice bundled arduino board sample? (mentioned many times by me somewhere)

because i just downloaded latest ver5.1 point whatever and retry. i still cant get it to work albeit the video given by the creator, i saw the 3 buttons free/ortho/angled but they didnt work while i tried to move an existing trace segment. all of them (the other segments) just snap to spaghetty mess aka free angle. now thinking if later i build a more complex board than the mere arduino example, i'm going to fix all the spaghetty mess created in 3 steps or more instead of 1 step of 45deg angle snap (if it works). if you cant imagine the seriousness, if i have to reposition 100 segments/traces, i'm going to make 300 steps or more instead of 100 steps. seriousness worsen as number of editing increase, linearly from my educated guess. now i'm not going to spent time with it like fe did in this thread to do full circuit from design to production with this magnificent time wasting event anticipated. time is gold, multiply by the gold price for each second, go figure. i'm anticipating someone will say, oh thats the trax way of doing it, you should get along! now dont tell me that bullshit, free kicad did it, diptrace did it, altium did it, you name it except trax. if i have to follow mr creator orgasmic desire, no no, let him alone do it. now if you read up to this point just forget all my nonsense rant, just answer the above mentioned 2 simple questions in plain english, pleaseeeee!

[free_electron]

One thing that would probably fix a lot of problems noticed is to switch off the "snap to grid".

are you insane ? the whole PCB world is about grids and accurate measuring. and you are starting off throwing that out of the window.
how can you make an accurate footprint if you cant snap to the grid ?

Here is how i make a footprint : for example a TQFP style package ( four rows of pads )
grab datasheet and find 2 numbers : the pin pitch and the distance between the left and right side, set the x grid to the pin pitch and the y grid to half the column distance.  ( you need the center point ) plonk down the left and right coumns. now swap x and y grid and plonk down top and bottom rows. set the y grid to half the width of the body and draw two lines ( top and bottom) with the length of the body . one coordinate is frozen already due to the grid. you onlyt need to set the length of the body, the spacing is handled by the snap to grid. now set the y grid to half the courtyard that you want and draw another two line. select the last four lines you have drawn , copy , paste and rotate the paste line 90 degrees around the centroid.

Done. i can do this in under a minute

The same goes for routing. if you know your channel and track width you can set the grids so that everything snaps neatly spaced.
the same goes for parts placement : wanna evenly space parts ? set the grid , place parts alter the grid. there are rules for parts placement ! depemnding on the proces you may need grid spacing.
For example a doublesided board that will go reflow top and wave soldering bottom. the parts can be denser on top than on the bottom. the pick and place and reflow have no problems. the wave on the other hand is a 'blob' you need a certain space between parts so the wave can get to the pins. so you setup a placement grid for top and bottom that are different.

then there is testpoint injection that also needs to happen on a grid as it determines the type of pogo pin that will be used. that typically uses a staggered grid.

so now we require snapping to :
- pin grids
- body grids,
- top placement grid
- bottom placement grid
- routing grids
- testpoint grids.

some of these can be polar grids ( circular )

and you are going to make a tool that doesn't have grids ? that doesn't work ...
and the tool bloody well should understand the difference between all those grids and the 'electrical grid' whci is a gravitational pull emanating form the center of any electrical object.
if i have a board that uses both metric and imperial parts and am on one type of grid i could not 'snap' to the center of a pad of that part happens to be using the other type.
the electrical grid solves that as it excerts a gravitational pull and allows the track to jump form the defined grid to the center of the pad , or ending of a track.

i haven't gotten that far in DEX yet , but i hope it has such capabilities or the experiment will end prematurely. you can NOT design a board without those capabilities. you may as well fling parts to a sheet of paper and hope they stick.

i am getting scared now ... my gut feeling says it will be a no .. to all of it.  i took another look at that demo board ... i get this icy creepy feeling that this is indeed wired gridless which would explain the mess. it also leads me to believe there is no such thing as design rules for inter-object spacing and/or realtime checking against the rules.  there are some parts and tracks that are placed very 'funny' where a proper DRC would have slammed on the brakes. it could be that they just used defaults ( which were dialed in wrong)

anyway. i haven't gotten that far yet...  first things first

i will try to make a schematic symbol today ... one with proper graphics.  .. i hope there is a grid there...

currently there is only one obstacle blocking me ( the rest are 'annoyances' , apart from the bugs like DEX crashing while trying to show the properties panel , or the installer trying to run autotrax instead of dex ) and that is the schematic autowiring. That has to go. i can not use this program with autowiring running. it just makes the schematics look like shit and it is too much work to clean up every time it messes up. especially the dots not being where the are supposed to be annoy the hell out of me.

so get on your horse and tell me how to turn autowiring off. ( I hope it can be turned off ... if noet : hard stop. end of excercise... )


two blockers right now :
- autowiring
- incorrect gerber

those need urgent fixing.

[Iliya]

For real-time DRC see video http://pcb.software/Videos/PCBs, 3rd one down.
You mentioned the poor video quality. All the video are HD 1280x720. You need to set up your video player.
Of course AutoTRAX has grids, snap to objects, snap to guide line/points. Again see videos or look at the top menu.
There are no plans to do all those grids; too confusing and not needed to create a board.
As for schematic auto-wire then you can do single ortho wiring, just click on each corner.
As for 'so get on your horse and tell me how to turn autowiring off' you are so rude.  There are several other profanities in your posts. Auto-wiring is not going away.  So if that’s your show stopper then it’s clearly over for you.
Incorrect Gerber: where’s the report?
Why do you not use the Help->Support->Report Problem? You have not made a single report. Seems like you just want to do a public 'song and dance'. Stop posing.
Judging by your posts you clearly have not even looked at the top menu e.g. grids.
Please post civil messages without swearing and report the problems and they will be fixed. Until you do I cannot help you or respond to any more message. I hope you see sense.
If you walked into a shop and carried on like you do you, the staff would call security and if you talked to my mother like that, then as the Pope says you would get a ....

[free_electron]

i tried watching some video's. what is the point of some of those ?
Fro example : 'Schematic, Simulation , PCB Design and Solid Modeling'

there is no sound apart from clicking . all we see is someone clicking menu's one by one , too short to read anything. no explanation.
the first 30 seconds is someone zooming in and out and panning a schematic and then a board , then a populated board  then 3d view. and then we click the menu's one by one.
what is the goal of this video ?

there is not a word about the 'simulation' in the title , there is no 'design going on' it doesn't show how to place a track/component or even move one. and modeling ? i didn't see that either ..

i just watched the 'Creating a custom potentiometer part' video  and have a couple of things that are missing in this video

we begin by placing pads. ->
- how do i define the shape , annular ring and hole of the pad ? that is not shown
- how do i set the pad number ? i may want to call a pad 'A' for example or 'T2'
- how do i change the positioning grid ?
- can i have a large crosshair cursor so i can see relational spacing to other objects as opposed to the little arrows on the rulerbars ?
- the outline is drawn as a simple rectangle . how can i change this ? i may want to add arcs and other things on there.
- is there a mechanical layer available so i can add features like keepout distances ( for example a part that has a hole for a screw. such a pad is non plated but i want to draw a circle on a mechanical layer showing where the head of the screw will be so i don;t route traces there ? )
- the white box is the silkscreen , but is there a courtyard available and can i set that ?
- can the silkscreen and courtyard be polygons (non rectangualr)? for example a vertical heatsink for a to 220 package is not a rectangle. it is a complex shape where the to220 package will later fit in. so i need a way to draw this complex shape and courtyard for it so the spatial drc ( i hope there is a spatial drc...) doesn't flag parts collision


next : we make schematic symbol
- you load this 'potentiometer artwork'. where does that come from ? and how can i draw that ? there doesn't seem to be a way to draw freehand lines, arcs and other non electrical elements to create a part symbol. it is just a 'picture' being plonked down. nothing is aligned to a grid.
- next pins  are being placed . those are also placed 'arbitrarily' . you even have to turn the grid off tho get  them to 'sort of align' .. they never quite do .... can we scale / size these imported pictures ? can we have then snap ? can we have drawing primitives ?
? right now pins only have a number. can i see a name there ? for example pin 1 is called  A0 ?

next we place the part on a schematic and nothing aligns with grids.

Then we move on to placing a 3d representation.
this is again done by 'eye'. nothing snaps i would assume i can click on a pin of that part, pick the center of that pin and tell it : that point needs to go to the center of this pad.) , instead the part is roughly placed 'by eye' ...


This whole process is all 'arbitrary' and 'by eye '. that is NOT how schematics and PCB's are designed ! This is just flinging stuff arbitrarily and hoping it pans out ...

i am waiting for input ...

[c4757p]

As for 'so get on your horse and tell me how to turn autowiring off' .... Auto-wiring is not going away.  So if that’s your show stopper then it’s clearly over for you.

Screw that then. I was hoping this might improve to the point of being usable, because it looks like it has potential. But I won't use it if you're going to tell me how to draw my schematics.

If you walked into a shop and carried on like you do you, the staff would call security and if you talked to my mother like that, then as the Pope says you would get a ....

You might notice that we're not in your shop. When we are, you're free to call security.

[free_electron]

For real-time DRC see video http://kov.com/Videos/PCBs, 3rd one down.

Just did. How do i set the clearance i want between a track and a pad. Or between a track and another track ? i may have certain high voltage tracks on the board that i want to keep a certain distance away from other tracks or objects. How do i set those rules.  For example all nets named HV* need to be 1 mm away from any other nets. nets beginning with D can be 6 mils spacing..
Everything needs to be 2.5 mm from the board boarder. via's need to be at least 12 mils apart. and so on.
all traces named T* need t be 25 mils wide, other 6 mils ( i found how to set the track width for a net in one of the videos. i believe it was the amplifier video. but how do i set the clearance ?)
how do i define such a rule set ? is there a rule editor somewhere ? is this done through schematic?

As far as i can see all the DRC tool does now is tell you there is a collision (short) it does not flag distance violations. This is not a design rule checker , the only rule it checks is 'short'

You mentioned the poor video quality. All the video are HD 1280x720. You need to set up your video player.

The video on the website is good quality. The video access through the on-line help in DEX is 240 pixels only ... that is where the 'poor quality' comment comes from

Of course AutoTRAX has grids, snap to objects, snap to guide line/points. Again see videos or look at the top menu.
There are no plans to do all those grids; too confusing and not needed to create a board.

board design is all about grids. some parts use imperial, others metric. some use very odd numbers. the grids are needed to accurately position parts so they mate with holes in enclosures , and they are needed to accurately position part features such as pins , holes, outlines, and bodies.

i found how to toggle grid on and off in on of the video's and toggle mm mils inch etc. but how can i set the x and y spacing of the grid ? for example i want a grid that is spaced 0.65mm apart so i can place pads on that grid for a component.

As for schematic auto-wire then you can do single ortho wiring, just click on each corner.
As for 'so get on your horse and tell me how to turn autowiring off' you are so rude.  There are several other profanities in your posts. Auto-wiring is not going away.  So if that’s your show stopper then it’s clearly over for you.

I am not asking you to remove it. just tell me how to turn it off. So i van draw a wire from a to b by clicking point by point how i want it to be drawn. Whenever i move a part the autowiring makes a mess of things.

Incorrect Gerber: where’s the report?
Why do you not use the Help->Support->Report Problem? You have not made a single report. Seems like you just want to do a public 'song and dance'. Stop posing.

I will file a report. This was a quick trial yesterday evening late. i noticed the oval doesn't show up as a flash  and the truetype text becomes a total mess in the gerber output. i loaded the gerber in Camtastic and ZofZ and both showed the same problem. i will load it in FrontLine tomorrow at work. (Frontline is the program used by almost all PCB fabricators out there to process the gerber and send it into the fab.)

[free_electron]

to give you an idea what i am building : i am recreating a project i did a while ago. not that complicated. essentialy a galvanic USB isolator

see images below :

like i said at the beginning: the goal is to make a REAL board. everyone can make a rectangle with some parts arbitrarily placed and randomly routed without any rules.
that is not the goal. The goals is to get a manufacturable board that is testable in production.

I was initially going to do something more complex but this is going to take too much time as the libraries have almost none of the parts i want. So i will limit it to creating a few parts.
I have real work to do and a life outside of this as well. the sun is out and the beach calls ... besides my car is antsy to go for a ride too.

in this board there are rules to be set. for example the clearance between the ground planes under the opto and Dc/Dc convertor needs to be taken into account. a slit needs milling under the DC Dc as it does not have the required creepage by itself. (  i want 1.5 kilovolt flashover ). There are thermal rules for certain parts. there are via placement rules as the via's double as in-circuit testpoints.

This design relies heavily on #D mechanical interaction as the placement of parts need to fit the chosen box. Board contour, cutouts , connector placement, thru-hole part placement is all driven by the shape of the box. So this will test how good the 3D capabilities really are. Every PCB program these days has 3D but for 'eye-candy' only. they have no spatial checker nor do they allow editing of board features while in 3D. i will find out if DEX can do that.

i have high hopes for this program. Hopes created by the 'marketing material'. let's see if it meets the mark.

[Iliya]

If you are looking at the Gerber using the Altium Gerber viewer then I'm not suprised, you need to contact them. Use GC-Prevue. AutoTRAX has 'it's own Gerber viewer, AutoTRAX outputs Gerber and the viewer reads it back in. It even works in real-time for small designs. See the tools menu.

See the DRC panel Panels->Panels->DRC.

Many of the button groups have a small button at the bottom right. Click to see setting popup. (the grid settings are in one of them)

Look at the Panels->Panels->Settings panel. All are in there.

You can download all the videos from http://pcb.software/Download/Videos

If you post problem reports them you will see how it works for everybody else, even those who do not pay for AutoTRAX.

I will do you a look into the auto-routing of moved symbols.