[sdiy] PC board from artwork?

[KA4HJH]

> On Oct 21, 2016, at 9:19 PM, rsdio at audiobanshee.com wrote:
> 
> Later, when the special blue paper for laser printers came out, I did layout by directly creating the PCB in the PostScript language. Since everything is mathematical in layout, it was easy to parameterize nearly every aspect of a PCB. I was using my NeXT computer at the time, so it was easy to see a preview of the PostScript output on the screen in precise 1:1 dimensions. Then, printing the same program to the printer resulted in no surprises. The hardest part was dealing with tiny trace widths and those heat-transfers. After a few SMD-to-DIP successes and one failed full design, I decided it was much better to let the machines do the etching.

When I was making boards 25 years ago I used Illustrator for schematics and PC boards. This was the old black and white version of Illustrator on a Mac Plus. I drew my own symbols and pads and copied and pasted them from a source document to the one I was working on. Because of PostScript's two decimal place limitation, I had to quantize the position of every anchor point to an integer multiple of .05". When adding a new object to a drawing, I would drag its central anchor point to a locked anchor point on the new drawing and then move it into its final location by using the arrow keys with the nudge distance set to .05". This assured that no rounding errors would occur and make lines crooked. Once I had everything set up correctly it worked like a charm. 

I remember that the resistor symbol was very tricky to get right. I still prefer my schematic symbols over any others I've seen. Those were the days.


Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"