[sdiy] Pulsonix PCB design software

[electronicpresskit]

> On Jul 26, 2017, at 10:06 PM, sleepy_dog at gmx.de wrote:
> 
> 
> epk wrote:
>> fwiw, I first used Eagle, then tried diptrace which was worlds easier, then learned Kicad with the help of a friend. I got frustrated with the updates breaking things and the issues with defining paths, so went back to diptrace for a couple projects. Diptrace is really nice but ultimately there were more tedious workflow issues and getting things done was simply slower.
> 
> - Diptrace -
> Yeah. I am using diptrace for some time now. Most aspects of how it work seem quite sensible and consistent, and all the little things at least do things smart enough to not cause unnecessary clicking etc.
> But there are parts where I thought, WTF do they do it that way.
> It get's on my nerves that they make a distinction between "a selected item" and a "group of items". Aaaargh, 1 item is a group of size 1, you fools!
> If I select a bunch of items, and want to do something to them that all of them support, I have to click "do X with selected items", if I click the regular command, it does that only to one of all the selected. To which one of them? Beats me. It can be inferred that I want to do things to more than one item - which is why I bloody selected them. Insanity!
> The copper pour sometimes does really funny things which need working around... (sometimes fixable by altering settings)
> 
> Could you mention what kinds of things cause more tedious work in Diptrace for you?
> I'm quite sure I encountered them as well, but I'd like to know exactly, to have a better idea of the other things and programs you yell me about.

One thing that irked me was that the user can change the part number of a multi-part package, however the pin numbers don’t update to reflect the change. So the user must delete the part and create a new one. This would be less of a problem, except that the wires disappear so you need to remember all the connections. I like to optimize which opamp I use depending on adjacent components when placing parts on a board so it can really add some time and increases the chance of error.

There are more, but my head has been out of dt for a while…see my comments about zoom and hotkeys below.

> 
>> The push'n'shove routing feature saves so much time that it alone outweighs the other inadequacies.
> 
> This is one thing that really made me curious, yes. Outweighing the other things... Well I can't tell for sure. Probably because I have not done boards with lots of parallel digital stuff, I guess :-D
> 
> 
>> 
>> The zooming is a bit strange at first but now I almost never use scrollbars. You don't have to move your mouse to/from the scrollbars to navigate, just point where you want to see and zoom in/out...it becomes fast.
> 
> I hardly ever use scroll bars e.g. in diptrace. I use zoom all the time.
> But the way it works in the latest (from days ago) "stable" windows build of KiCad, it's broken. It makes the damn mouse cursor jump to the center if you dare to position it elsewhere to zoom *there*. It's like it hits you in your face, again and again and again. Not acceptable.

I don’t think this method of zooming is considered broken by the kicad community. I can see how it’s jarring, it probably was that way for me at first but it’s absolutely normal now. The zooming method in dt actually bothered me a bit :) If I zoomed in on a part near the top edge of the viewable area I would often need to scroll to see what was above it. What I find useful about the kicad zoom is that you always get to see what is surrounding your point of focus. 

>> 
>> Keyboard integration is really good so mousing can be minimal. User definable single keystroke key commands speed things up too.
> Well, is that not true of diptrace, too? What of the most frequent actions can't you do with key shortcuts instead menu entries?
> If a program forces you to memorize keys for practically everything, OTOH, that's not something you can sell me as a plus.

diptrace made good progress by adding user definable keystrokes but the available actions are more extensive in kicad. It’s also that you don’t need to click on anything to perform an action. Just hover the mouse and hit c to copy something then drag and click to place. Standard copy/paste is click+modifier+c plus modifier+v to paste. Is that really one move vs five? These differences add up when it’s across the whole interface and I move around kicad a lot faster.

No kicad developer has ever kidnapped a family member of mine and put a gun to their head to ensure I would not click on the menus or the gui :P 

>> 
>> The file formats are not only free from being locked into a vendor but they are human readable AND editable natively. You can search/paste/replace in a text editor, then save and reopen without doing any file conversions.
> 
> That's not necessarily good. Binary files can make sense. Text files can get large. Program needs more disk access.
> But I *might* like it, if it stays in reasonable bounds.
> I'd probably try how well those text files work with source control (versioning). Should be well compressible to keep the repo at sane size.

As a point of reference, a 1300 pin schematic is 311kb.

epk