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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Sprint Layout
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| Tinine Guru  Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
I have avoided PCB layouts since forever, preferring to outsource but dammit, with the "global supply-chain" issue, I have been making changes every five minutes and so I finally bit-the-bullet. It has been a long time since I got giddy, using a Windows app but I gotta say the SL-6 has got me hooked  BigMik also impressed the heck out of me with Dex and so I bought a licence but have yet to fire-it-up (I love how Dex can generate curved tracks  )I have always admired my E-100 boards (I need to get a life) and so it's very encouraging to just learn that Grogster also uses SL Hey Graeme, I for one would love a copy of your parts library. I haven't created any yet. SL needs better promotion. It seems to be rock-solid, intuitive and bug-free. How come there are next-to-no tutorials for it? There is one guy on YouTube who has made some really awful demonstrations that would put a glass-eye to sleep. Just to demonstate a 2-second feature, we have to sit through him clumsily faffing around, doing irrelevant cr@p.  SL deserves better.Craig Edited 2022-06-25 20:40 by Tinine |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9060 |
Hey buddy.  Been using SL 4-6 for many years now, and you have beaten me to posting a new thread for the macros!  You wonderful bastard!  I'm quite drunk tonight, so I will wait till tomorrow before I upload any macro ZIP file, but I can say that it now includes the Pico module among others - 300+ macros. All my PCB's I make in SL, and export to gerbers and have them made from there. Definitely no issue having SL boards made by any PCB house. Ahhhhh.......lovely booze....... Catch you all tomorrow. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Arrrgh....I have my workload and milestones all planned out for today but I am a stone's throw from one of the few FUN pubs that I know and the weather is half-decent. All of a sudden, this mug of coffee ain't tasting so good Dammit Graeme Craig Edited 2022-06-25 22:30 by Tinine |
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| pwillard Senior Member  Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 274 |
I originally got SL back in 2003, and while I have owned DEX, and tried Eagle, PADS, Tango, and Design Spark, I now work mainly with Kicad and Sprint-Layout. And here's the thing, if you are only making a 100mmx100mm board to stay within "affordable" limits with low-cost board houses... then using SL6 just makes sense. It may not be a full EDA suite... but it sure saves time when knocking out a small board. Anyway... like I mentioned in the other thread... I'm going to go through my Makro selection to pick out some items to share... (But right now I'm sittin' in an air-conditioned Starbucks, ~9:00 AM and it will very shortly be 32c here, sipping my espresso... and it's good. The coolest day in over a week.) Edited 2022-06-25 23:21 by pwillard |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
My board is 400mm X 150mm and I'm loving how I can zip around the board with the mouse wheel; zoom out, move the pointer to another area of interest and zoom right in. Maybe this nothing new but I normally only use the PC for coding. The Explorer E-100 is a work of art and so now I'm really fired-up, knowing that Grogster used SL Craig |
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vegipete Guru Joined: 29/01/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 1082 |
I've been using Sprint Layout for ages, ever since I bought a copy of v4 in Germany many years ago (and received a empty CD case  )I've played with numerous other packages, and I use KiCAD a bit, but I always return to Sprint Layout because it is so quick and easy to bang something out. Two useful tricks - hold the mousewheel down to drag the screen around - the Test tool (near the bottom of the tool list on the left) is great for finding what all is connected to what, including ground pads with thermal reliefs. I should spend time setting hotkeys up for my liking. Hey Grogster, does Sprint Layout work well with Wine and Linux? Visit Vegipete's *Mite Library for cool programs. |
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| pwillard Senior Member Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 274 |
I tried it with wine... I recall having a couple of issues... but it was a LONG time ago. |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5722 |
Here's some macros to get the ball rolling. It's most of what I use regularly, not all, but the most useful. mixtel90.zip The PicoMite files are split. There are two hardware drawings, one with the USB connector and one without. There are also two sets of pin refs - one very small. Both have a pad, which is the insertion point. Just plonk it on pin 1. This system is good because you can delete the refs from under a SMD PicoMite or from a crowded PCB very easily. You can also re-size or rotate all the refs at the same time very easily I also use a lot from the standard library. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Many thanks, Mick. I already ripped off your VGA connector when you posted your game thingy I have a couple of questions regarding SL but I'll wait because Graeme made me go to the bar Craig |
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| pwillard Senior Member Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 274 |
Ok, so I just re-checked... the Out-of-Box default experience with WINE on my Mint Machine says no... not working. It might work with some tweaking maybe... But the moment I placed a footprint... the program went to LALA Land and HUNG with no recovery possible. It is a bummer that the guys at ABACOM only program for Windows. FYI: Here is my latest "updated" PICO footprint for Surface Mounting.  PicoCastellated.zip Edited 2022-06-26 12:16 by pwillard |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9060 |
@ Tinnie - sorry to force you to the pub! I always drink at home, but I need to wind that back a bit myself, but booze is so lovely and as I have no partner, wife, or children, I can kinda please myself with what I do. Which may actually be a bad thing in terms of my intake!  @ vegipete - I have tried all my Abacom softwares under Wine with Linux, and I was able to make them work, but they were unstable. They would run for a while, then just totally lock-up, and WINE would crash. That's no use to me, if they are unstable for whatever reason - you can't design layouts in that situation, as you could lose all your work when an unpredictable lock-up happens. I got them working fine in a VM under Linux. I had a very sleek and simple Windoze XP VM with those softwares running inside of it, but I could never get printing from inside the VM to work with the printer that Linux knew it had - and I got sick of playing about and asking questions on the Mint forums and getting nowhere, and just went back to Windoze for the CAD stuff. @ pwillard - "... the program went to LALA Land and HUNG with no recovery possible." - yeah, that was pretty much my experience also. Despite WINE listing Sprint Layout as being compatible, from what I remember, I found it unstable to the point of being too dangerous to try to use it or you could loose all your work when a lock-up happens. As mentioned above, inside an XP VM it worked fine, but as I often need to print out layouts to check for sizes and stuff, not being able to print from the VM to the Linux printer basically killed it completely for me. Here is my mackro's folder: (348 mackros) MACROS(Graeme's).zip Edited 2022-06-26 14:33 by Grogster Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1781 |
"as I often need to print out layouts to check for sizes and stuff, " It's a bit clumsy but it can be done on the screen. The distance between 11 0.1" pitch holes is 1". Hold a ruler on the screen and zoom the image until 11 holes spans 1". The image is now 1:1, so you can hold the components on the screen to check the fit. |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9060 |
Interesting idea. At the time, the printer I was trying to talk to was a NETWORK printer that Mint knew all about, but that the XP VM flatly REFUSED to see - no matter what. Results might have been different, had I had a local printer on USB on the Mint box, but I never tried that. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| pwillard Senior Member Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 274 |
One of the things I use SprintLayout for is to make CHIP LABELS, like the way Grant Searle did. This turns out to be very handy when breadboarding new designs. I'll look through my Makros and see if I can find what is unique from the previous uploads to avoid duplicates.  ChipLabels.zip Edited 2022-06-26 21:41 by pwillard |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Yeah, I discovered this by accident....got some strange looks when I was holding chips up to the screen but I find it really useful.I just opened the box for the first time of my A3-size printer that I purchased in 2019 so I will soon be printing the board for a proper check.Laundry day today so I haven't been at my desk but looks like some good stuff here. Question: My board, in SL is actual size but I see the option to draw a board outline on a larger background....should I be doing the outline thing? Craig |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5722 |
Only if it helps you look at stuff. Things I've found useful are: Set the origin somewhere sensible - not on your PCB. Mark it by putting it in a circle or something so you can always put it back in the same place That way you can move your PCB around or rotate it and the relationship between things will always stay the same. You can also move the origin to help with laying other bits out and not get lost. Don't let the drawing area be stupidly bigger than your PCB size (unless you need it as workspace). The bigger the work area the more processing is needed, even if there is nothing drawn there, so the slower the program runs. When designing macros they won't usually work well on nice divisors of 0.1" so change to fractions of a mm then switch back once it's been saved. Always draw your macros as accurately as you possibly can. You'll be glad that you did some time in the future. :) Make holes in the board by working on layer O and creating a pad with the external and hole diameters the same. Nothing on layer O is a connection, so you can use it for construction lines as well as the PCB outline. The Test probe won't pick them up. You have to delete them before creating the gerbers though. Edited 2022-06-27 03:45 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8578 |
Sorry to be a wet weekend but if I understand Sprint correctly it does not start from a schematic but you design direct onto the PCB? If this is the case I really think this is the wrong approach except for trivial boards. I happen to use DesignSpark but there are lots of other packages that do it the "right" way. My experience is that I have never had a PCB not work if the schematic was correct. I input my design rules (track to track spacings etc.) and then when I check the rules in the layout it confirms that every connection in the schematic is made and that every track is properly spaced - crucial for things like bussed connections. Integrating the circuit design and PCB layout just seems wrong to me. If I make a change in the design then the design rule check will ensure that every change in the layout needed is made. Let me give an example of something I do routinely. Typically I will layout without making the ground connections but for SMD parts just connect the pin to a via. Then I can define a flood fill on the bottom layer attached to the GND net. When I do the fill most GNDs will then be connected but there may be some islands where I need to make a top layer connection. Again the design rule check identifies this instantly. Without the separation of schematic and layout I don't know how you would do this. Sprint makes it easy to define new parts and footprints but this is the most likely area where errors will be made. In DesignSpark hundreds of thousands of validated part schematics and footprints are available through ECAD. Similar libraries exist for other packages. Designing a new part is an absolute last resort in order to minimise error. Just my view FWIW but if you are going to learn something new then learn something that uses a more accepted professional workflow. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
SL6 has a DRC.....and I'm being very careful/conservative. My board is big but quite simple; the size is mainly to accommodate many 12-way Phoenix-type connectors (16 of them). I have avoided board layout like the plague but now I have been bitten by the bug. I will definitely be looking at other options. Craig |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8578 |
You say you also have a Dex licence. It certainly does things properly |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Dex makes sense because we have a resident tutor...BigMik. I looked at Design-Spark some time ago and liked the fact that they have an entire suite of tools. My problem is that I'm a bit of a hack when it comes to electronic design and putting a flaky design out in the field is simply not an option. Craig |
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