Front Panels

[List, Christopher]

Hi Guys -

Of course you all know how near and dear to my heart this subject is -
so I can't let it come up w/o a comment!

As anyone can tell by looking at my personal modules (
http:/www.mindspring.com/~clist/Spunky/closeup.html ) as well as the
ASM-1 faceplates I did (I sold out long ago - please no more requests!)
- I have my own little "library" of faceplate design components. I did a
lot of planning and design work early, put all of my standards in place,
and that has allowed me to make about 20 or 30 modules over a long
period of time all with a consistent "feel" - i.e. the knob markings,
the fonts, the layouts, etc.

I did all of mine in Corel draw and here are a couple of things that I
found helpful;

1. I did all of my pot-mounting right on the edges of the protoboard -
same as the MOTM modules. because of this, I did all of measurements in
1/10" spacing - same as the protoboard. This way, the pins of the
spectrol pots I used always line up with the faceplate holes.

2. One of the nice things about Corel is that you can draw in "outline"
mode - it draws faster and shows lines of any color and thickness as
thin black lines. I used this to make standard 1/10" aligned sizes for
all of my graphic objects. You see, when you create a "group" in these
drawing programs, often times your pot hole won't be in the center of
the image once you puy some text around it and stuff. What I'd do is
create a rectange around the whole grouped object - **with clear or
white lines** - such that the hole is in the center of the rectangle. I
could see this "frame" when drawing in "outline" mode - but it wouldn't
print... 
I did the same thing with jacks. Since the size of jack is bigger than
the hole you want to drill, I'd put a clear circle around my jack
graphic that would keep me from placing text where it would get covered
by part of the jack.

If anyone wants copies of my Corel 3.0 files that I've used, just send
me an email, I'd be glad to share...

- CList