Re: gEDA-user: pcb commands to automatically select, cut, rotate, and paste elements

[Mark Rages <markrages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Stephan Boettcher
<boettcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mark Rages <markrages@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> You would be wise to avoid PCB for anything non-rectangular.  It is
>> exceedingly painful.
>
> I do recommend pcb for anything non-rectangular.  The arcs can be nicely
> done in gnumeric, python, awk, whatever.  With a gui this will be
> difficult.
>
> For example the outline of the board on the attached picture (which will
> launch into space later this year to land on Mars)
>

It looks nice.  I notice you did not use any curved traces, and except
for outline and three components (hall sensors?) everything is
rectilinear.

A GUI can easily accomodate arcs if we teach it about concepts from
mechanical 2D CAD:  trim, extend, offset.  I first learned this way of
drawing twenty years ago in AutoCAD, but they are ink-and-paper
concepts.  I don't think their application to PCB would be hard to do.
 I got started in on it, but I got stuck on a trivial problem and
can't get anyone's attention who might help me.[1]

Anyway, other tools are not much better.  When it became clear that
PCB wasn't going to work out, I switched to a Windows program called
"Altium."  Altium's pcb layout is only slightly better, but not worth
the thousands of dollars we paid for it.

Regards,
Mark
markrages@gmail

[1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.cad.geda.user/35369
-- 
Mark Rages, Engineer
Midwest Telecine LLC
markrages@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user