Guru
Joined: 09/08/2007
Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
| Posted: 01:57am 16 Jul 2019 |
Problem with a tutorial is that it usually tells you ALL of the things it can do.
Once you start using it, a lot of the more exotic features may not be necessary.
Most packages these days require a fully detailed schematic to start from, and that can take about 95% of the time to do properly, because every component requires a lot of detail to be entered.
Even things like a supplier and suppliers part number and cost of each part!
All so that it can spit out a correct bill of materials at the end, or for use with a circuit simulator such as Spice.
That is important if you are doing this professionally for the Company you work for.
You can avoid all of that, by just placing parts on the circuit board manually, and joining up pads with tracks.
You still get all your Gerbers and drill files and it works !!
As a hobby project that may be all you really need to begin with.
Its only when you start having a very large complex board with dozens of integrated circuits and maybe a thousand pads and holes. It then becomes just about impossible to do it all manually without making multiple errors.
So don't be put off by a huge tutorial, a lot of it can be bypassed initially by just using parts picked from the parts library, and linking up pins manually.
Cheers, Tony.