DEX eval by free_electron

[firewalker]

[free_electron]

Strange. I also use Win7 with the current FF, and it looks fine 

The "Chip Parameters" page looks exactly like yours - just a graphic without text. A quick peek with FireBug i can tell that this page does not have any text in a hidden element, the page just contains that image...

hold it  ! that is NOT the page i am referring to !

look in my attached pictures and see what i selected in the left column
All those empties sit under 'DEX design model '

i started going over this entire documentation thing as there are so many thing's i can;t find an answer to by simply prodding around in the software. so i was hoping that reading the documention would help out. if halp the pages are empty or contain just a picture. this is going to get really hard ... Can't say i'm not trying...

[elgonzo]

Strange. I also use Win7 with the current FF, and it looks fine 

The "Chip Parameters" page looks exactly like yours - just a graphic without text. A quick peek with FireBug i can tell that this page does not have any text in a hidden element, the page just contains that image...

hold it  ! that is NOT the page i am referring to !

look in my attached pictures and see what i selected in the left column

Oops, my bad. Sorry. The pages you refer to is indeed empty. I am sorry for the confusion...

[free_electron]

Strange. I also use Win7 with the current FF, and it looks fine 

The "Chip Parameters" page looks exactly like yours - just a graphic without text. A quick peek with FireBug i can tell that this page does not have any text in a hidden element, the page just contains that image...

hold it  ! that is NOT the page i am referring to !

look in my attached pictures and see what i selected in the left column

Oops, my bad. Sorry. Indeed, the page you refer to is indeed empty. I am sorry for the confusion...

can you do a quick check for the other pages in that same chapter ? all of those are empty. The sdame for most the footprint generator pages.
i just want to rule out that it is a machine problem ( like not having a java engine or something like that . i refuse to install java as it is a security hole ).

Just want to cover my butt before i raise a stink over the 'lacking documentation'     

[elgonzo]

can you do a quick check for the other pages in that same chapter ? all of those are empty. The sdame for most the footprint generator pages.
i just want to rule out that it is a machine problem ( like not having a java engine or something like that . i refuse to install java as it is a security hole ).

Just want to cover my butt before i raise a stink over the 'lacking documentation' 

I went through all the pages that you listed.
Everything the same.
For page for Dex's design model -> Adding graphics to sheets -> Lines you did not note what you saw there. In my browser it is only an image and some rudimentary text (see attachment)

[free_electron]

can you do a quick check for the other pages in that same chapter ? all of those are empty. The sdame for most the footprint generator pages.
i just want to rule out that it is a machine problem ( like not having a java engine or something like that . i refuse to install java as it is a security hole ).

Just want to cover my butt before i raise a stink over the 'lacking documentation' 

I went through all the pages that you listed.
Everything the same.
For page for Dex's design model -> Adding graphics to sheets -> Lines you did not note what you saw there. In my browser it is only an image and some rudimentary text (see attachment)

correct. that is exactly what is there. the one below that is just some scribbles..

-sigh-.  i'm lost now. i really need some documentation to move on. This is just not workable.

At this point i have put in a serious a mount of time and effort. I'm not ready to call it quits as this is not a review yet: i haven't even made a schematic and pushed to board .

I've just been scratching at a few little things using the default included example, and digging in the documentation.
DEX clearly needs a bit of work both in the program and in the documentation . I think that is clearly proven by now.

Let's see where we are headed next.

[ozwolf]

i've hit another snag ... i am trying really hard to read the docs but there is something wrong with the documentation: either the website has broken links or that documentation is a work in progress...

www.kov.com/manual

chapter :

Dex's design model    <- note that this is about pages in this chapter , not about the 'parts chapter' later in the documentation
-> Parts  -empty-
->-> Schematic symbols -empty-
.
.
.


This is getting to be very cumbersome.. the documentation is severely lacking and it takes a tremendous amount of time to figure out the basics. i am getting frustrated with this thing... i can generally pick up a new piece of software very quickly. Most cad tools for schematic pcb work somewhat on the same principles. This ? radically different ... and without documentation hard to figure out as i am in completely uncharted waters.

My DEX Manual looks different from yours.  I downloaded mine from Help->Printed Manual.  You get two choices - PDF version and an ePub.  My PDF version is dated 2013 and a slightly different structure/Index.

I did a PDF search on "Parametric" and found page 279 with a very similar diagram with text.  Is that any help?

Ozwolf

[free_electron]

i am checking out that PDF file as well right now... it is essentially a hardcopy of the only version, with exactly the same text and pictures. there is no additional information that is not on the online version.

it would be really helpful to have a tutorial that shows, step-by-step, how to create a part symbol

[ozwolf]

I found two videos that may help;

Adding Graphics to Your Drawings - Try www.kov.com/videos/Graphics &
Creating a Custom SOT223 Transistor - Try www.kov.com/videos/Parts

I found these under Help->Video Tutorials

You can download all of the video library (as a ZIP file) from http://www.kov.com/Download/Videos.

Ozwolf

[Iliya]

You can turn of wire Auto-Route when moving symbols. It's been there for ages

[Iliya]

i am checking out that PDF file as well right now... it is essentially a hardcopy of the only version, with exactly the same text and pictures. there is no additional information that is not on the online version.

it would be really helpful to have a tutorial that shows, step-by-step, how to create a part symbol

I have just updated the online manual http://pcb.software/manual/
the PDF http://pcb.software/Download/Manual
The iPad ePub hhttp://pcb.software/Download/eBook

[Iliya]

I know it's great to start using any program straight away but AutoTRAX has loads of functionality.
I suggest:
Look at the the menus. As you hover over them a tooltip appears.
Check all the panels out.
Click on all the small buttons at the bottom right of some button groups. The settings will appear.
Press F1

[Iliya]

You can turn of wire Auto-Route when moving symbols. It's been there for ages

You might find this useful.
Schematics->Rewire-All

[hli]

On a side note: I was following this thread yesterday. And today I stumbled over this post by Seth Godin about the difference between advice and criticism: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/01/advice-or-criticism.html
(Being a software developer by myself I know its difficult to hear someone telling me that the stuff I wrote is wrong somehow - but in most cases they are right).
You are getting advice from someone who has seen most of the EECAD systems that are out there, has used them for doing real stuff, and therefore knows many valid usecases, and has valid expectations how they should (or sometimes must) behave.  Use them to make your product better. You always can say no to feature requests (and probably you should do so since you cannot implement them all), but it needs to be an informed decision with a good reason. And you need to know what part of your target audience you might loose by doing so.

[nctnico]

I know it's great to start using any program straight away but AutoTRAX has loads of functionality.
I suggest:
Look at the the menus. As you hover over them a tooltip appears.
Check all the panels out.
Click on all the small buttons at the bottom right of some button groups. The settings will appear.
Press F1

That is not going to work! You need step-by-step tutorials in a book (nowadays a PDF file). People can't read your brain and figure out the logic behind your software from just looking at it. What is perfectly logical to you makes no sense to someone else.

[Iliya]

I find with all software, like all things, it's best to see the 'lay of the land'. This gives at least some insight at to what's 'on offer'.
I was hoping that free-electron was going to send me the project he wrote about but I have had nothing yet. It could have been the basis of a practical tutorial for creating parts and putting them together in a project. Both written and video.
I also have not had any problem reports.

[Monkeh]

I find with all software, like all things, it's best to see the 'lay of the land'. This gives at least some insight at to what's 'on offer'.
I was hoping that free-electron was going to send me the project he wrote about but I have had nothing yet. It could have been the basis of a practical tutorial for creating parts and putting them together in a project. Both written and video.
I also have not had any problem reports.

Why would he send you the board when the whole goal was to recreate it himself as a test of the software?

[Iliya]

I find with all software, like all things, it's best to see the 'lay of the land'. This gives at least some insight at to what's 'on offer'.
I was hoping that free-electron was going to send me the project he wrote about but I have had nothing yet. It could have been the basis of a practical tutorial for creating parts and putting them together in a project. Both written and video.
I also have not had any problem reports.

Why would he send you the board when the whole goal was to recreate it himself as a test of the software?

The answer is at the end of the second paragraph. It could have been the basis of a practical tutorial for creating parts and putting them together in a project. Both written and video.
Why would he not want to?

[Iliya]

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.

I don't pretend to be a big company. That would be dishonest. I'm very happy doing it alone. I have the multiple skill set and really enjoy it. I'm not about to die yet

[free_electron]

I posted the pdf file for that project yesterday. It is underneath the four pictures of the project.

I am deliberately not sending you the project files , not because i want to play bad, but for the following reason : you , as the author, know this program inside and out. I am sure you will recreate this project in five minutes flat.
However, this is MY review and I want to show YOU to trouble people run in to when trying to learn your program. I am not doing that to screw you , but to show you where the problems are with the program and the documentation so you can fix it and make it better.

Every single point i have raised here are things i encountered during my exploration of this program.

I started off as the typical iser : download, onstall and fire it up. Heck no im not gonna read manuals. Me superman , me know everything, program stupid ! 

Like it or not, but that is what 99% of the people do when they install a new piece of software. They download it, have expectations and it should work. They are going to learn on their own without reading anything. A good program knows how to defend itself against that.

Dont take this the wrong way, but, you, as its author, are BLIND. Because you know how it works and how it SHOULD be used. Give a monkey a hammer and a nail and you will be amazed what he will do with it. The hammer may be used to scratch his back while he is chewing on the nail... You may call yourself lucky if you get away without the monkey having thrown the hammer at you , possibly followed by something the monkey makey himself (typically once or twice a day, after digesting for a while...)

So i started scratching around first at the default project finding that the autowire makes a general mess of things , finding the parts linrary is wrong , finding that the parts search algorithm doesnt do what it says it does and is not usable. Then i messed a bit with some existing parts , clicked some random buttons and got dex to crash (the properties dialog did not show. After trying to restart it i found out the installer created shortcuts for the no existing autotrax.exe instead of dex.exe.

Then i clicked some more buttons got some more trouble and eventually figured out how to produce gerber. And then i looked at that.

Now i at the point where the typical newbie (newbie as in learning this program) goes : sigh.. I cant figure this out , maybe i should read the manual ..

So i did, finding half the pages are blank...

So this is the point where i am now.

Yes i do use hyperbole, yeas i am using the heavy cannins, because in reality, a lot of people that install something new for the first time get pissed if they cant get it to work immediately.
This is the nature of people.

Add on top of that that i have high expectations , i know just a bit more than your average user about designig boards and i will point out any catastrophic mistakes, medium mistakes and may harp on about something that looks like a small detail to 'average joe' but that, in an industrial setting, is a very big problem.

A coup,e of examples : the bga numbering in the footprint is wrong. There are letters you can not use. This is an industry standard. If you create a schematic symbol from the datsheet you will not be able to line it up. There will be no column with the letter i although the footprint has one. So all signals are now miswired yielding an incorrect board.

The chip component (actually most generators )generator is lacking. I explained yesterday why it is lacking.(see my explanation on chip components and pad size/width and offset for resistors and capacitors. The main reason for tombstoning is incorrect pad geometry and position under the electrodes. I want to have an easy way to tell the software how i like things to be positioned. I do not eant to have to do all that work by hand, judging by eye... Nor do i want to have to do all the coordinate calculations by hand and then type them in. The program needs to do that based on some criteria i feed it.  That is what makes or breaks a design program. There is a difference between a drawing program and a design program. You can draw a pcb in ms paint, and there are people that do that. A lot of 'entry level' pcb programs are nothing kore than glorified pen and paper. You can draw things and move them around on a screen , but the program has no concept of what it is you are trying to draw and it will not stop you if you mess things up. That is where good design programs come in. The y tell you , based on a set of criteria , ehh. You cant do this becuase you will violate this and that. Either change the criteria or do something else.

 I read your entire user forum and even there there is a post (i have not posted anything there) from someone stating he wants the capability to offset the pads on the pins to change the toe/heel fillet. That has been requested for a long time and it is still not in the program.
That is a perfectly valid request ! And a very important one. There is a difference making a layout to produce 1 board or for a million boards. The heel/toe offsets have a big impact on soldering yield. There is a reason IPC spend a tremendous amount of time doing soldering tests and coming up with tables on what works best.

Anyway. Long discourse.

Like i said i amnot sharing the files on purpose. The purpose being to show you what problem people run i to when trying to use this program and trying to do thing they want to do.

This is the only 'honest' process to find problem areas , shortcomings, and bugs.
Having the process done by someone who knows the program in and out learns nothing.

[Iliya]

So you don’t want help and won’t post reports. Can’t help you much! I will leave you to get on with it.  The biggest problem you have is your intuitive experience is based on Altium so you expect to see Altium UI methods everywhere. I still firmly believe that your motives are dark and negative. Sadly I have to give up on you. Remember, throwing mud sticks to your hands.

[Monkeh]

So you don’t want help and won’t post reports. Can’t help you much! I will leave you to get on with it.  The biggest problem you have is your intuitive experience is based on Altium so you expect to see Altium UI methods everywhere. I still firmly believe that your motives are dark and negative. Sadly I have to give up on you. Remember, throwing mud sticks to your hands.

Way to go. He gives you valuable feedback on the functionality of your software, and you throw your toys out the pram.

[free_electron]

I found two videos that may help;

Adding Graphics to Your Drawings - Try www.kov.com/videos/Graphics &
Creating a Custom SOT223 Transistor - Try www.kov.com/videos/Parts

I found these under Help->Video Tutorials

You can download all of the video library (as a ZIP file) from http://www.kov.com/Download/Videos.

Ozwolf

I watched that one . Pretty much useless as it only shows some random ,purposeless scribbling of varios graphic elements.

Here is wat that video should show :
Drawing abox first. Then click on the box and alter its width and height , bith graphically by dragging, and numerically by typing in numbers for width and height and positioning in the screen.

I've said it before : coordinates are VERY important for pcb design as stuff needs to fit ! So i need a way to easily manipulate the numerical propertie of an object.
No e of that is shown in the video.

Second, now you have bunch of scribbles : how do you get them in a part ?  Not shown anywhere.

Let's say i want to make an ieee style symbol for a 74192. How do i do that ? Right now a chip symbol is always a rectangular box that autosizes if you move pins. An ieee symbol is not a simple rectangle.
An opamp is not a rectangle. I may need a custom shape for both the outline and may need to put symbols , like a block diagram of the guts of the chip, on there.

That is what i am looking for. I cannot find that. All i found is drag 'art' on a part and then put 'hostpots' wor wires , 'by eye'.. Watch the video how it is done. It is positioned by eye. Nothing lines up. Half of the symbols in the library do t even match the drawing grid. Where does this 'art' come from, hoe is it made and how can i crate art that DOES line up properly.

Another shortcoming that pops up (at least for me) is that you can only enter things like line width in thou (mils). What if i want a line that is exactly 1.1 millimeter ?
Unfortunately in the pcb world we have to deal with both coordinate systems , so the software should allow for that. Cad programs allow that because they let you toggle between them and let you override by adding suffixes to numbers.
Autocad, illustrator , and many others.
You can type 1mm or 1mil or 1''1 . They will translate for you. I didnt see that here. This is very important feature in the pcb world.

[aroby]

@freeelectron - if I recall correctly, there are unit selectors. I know I have seen and used them. I think they are radio buttons on the parts builder. I can't check until this evening.

[free_electron]

So you don’t want help and won’t post reports. Can’t help you much! I will leave you to get on with it.  The biggest problem you have is your intuitive experience is based on Altium so you expect to see Altium UI methods everywhere. I still firmly believe that your motives are dark and negative. Sadly I have to give up on you. Remember, throwing mud sticks to your hands.

My intuitive experience is based on a whole range of programs. Orcad, dxdesigner, altium, opus, all the way back to archaic stuff such as hiwire, tango and smartwork.
Those are all pcb design programs. And they all sorta kinda work based on a bunch of base principles.

If you are going to make a pcb program ... See first what others do , and then make it better. Dont do something comlletely different because that aint gonna work.

What do you mean not wanting to help ? I posted the pdf file. Fine i'll email it to you. Yesterday ot was late and i have a life outside this. Had dinner with friends and i went to the beach for a coup,e of hours. The weather was just too nice and the car was begging for a drive (i wanted to test the new  features that it downloaded friday like speed dependent height adjustment and steerring stiffness as well as the new control functions , traffic based routing and a bunch of other cool stuff.)

I'll send you the pdf. But like i said, you aint getting the layout files themselves because that is not a proper review. You will surely put it together in 5 minutes and then i have learned nothing and have not heard from someone who want to learn the program what troubles he runs into.

I have not filed bug reports because yesterday i was not playing with the program , i just watched videos and read the (blank) pages in the user manual.

I posted the problems and bugs i found here in the open. I guess you don't want that ... I also noticed that on your forum in the bug section. First post was : this is the bugs section, but dont post program bugs here. Only post bugs that are 'user bugs'

'Intricate things' writes

So, is this area principally to discuss potential bug discoveries and work-arounds with our fellow users, ie not really intended to be a main reporting path? Just to say "I press X and nothing happens" and someone replies "don't forget to press Y first or it won't work
-snip-

Chris

 
 IliyaIliya 
October 2014
The best way to get a bug fix is to report it inside DEX. Not much point in telling the world, they can't fix it!

However if you think you have 'finger' trouble then this is the place. It also lets others see how it was solved.

So these are not program bugs but 'buggy users'. Suffering from the 'My child, good child ' syndrome ? Whatever you do : don't publicly show the bugs , send em to me so i can sweep em under the rug. Don't want to have the world know about problems.

This is a review remember. It would not be hinest if it would only show the good and hide the bad.
Unfortunatelty the way things are unfolding there are currently problems preventing us from getting to the good. I have explored some areas i. The program that i think are cool , but i have not gotten to the point where i can review those features and publish my findings, because i am stuck at an earlier point in the design process:

Making a schemaric synbol with a custom shape. And not simly by dragging some premade graphics from library. Show me how to make that graphics.
And then attaching a correct footprint to it.

You have admitted yourself that the provided libraries are crap and were converted libraries you. , well euh , ahem .. 'found somewhere' and if there was anythign wrong with them i should go complain there.

So idecided to create my own , clean library. And im running into abit of trouble. No documentation, no video.

Show me how to draw a custom symbol, both in schematic and pcb FROM SCRATCH, step by step.
It doesnt need to be a conllex one. Do a simple opamp. A triangle with 5 pins, but show how to draw the triangle , not drag it premade out of a folder.

Then make a sot23 package for it with 5 pins. I want a rectangular pad to indicate pin 1 and oblongs for the others. I need a 2/3 toe to heel ratio on the pads over the pins. Use the datasheet for an mcp6001 opamp from microchip for outline dimensions and land pattern design.
Do it using the wizard and then show the manipulation steps required to get pad shapes and positioning exactly (numerically, not 'by eye')

That is what is needed right now. You said the linraries are crap. Well , show me how to use DEX to make my own symbols and footprints and i'll build you a working one.