freestompboxes.org

Excellent progress in such a short time.

I'd like to make a few requests.

1) allow the user to edit the color of individual jumper wires.
2) add component images for end-on devices, like resistors and diodes
3) let the user set mousewheel input to control zoom, instead of vertical scrolling

A look at the attached image will give you an idea of why I requested these features. I did this in Corel Draw, just using grouped vector shapes.

I would not want to try to remember the jumper routings, without being able to color code them. (red for below the board, blue for above, and green for components and their leads) A convenient way to zoom helps with a layout this crowded as well.

Note that I mounted most of the resistors and diodes "on end", to save space.

thanks for suggestions, I'll include them all. Mouse wheel zoom is already configurable, but there's no gui yet so you'd have to do it from the file.
Cheers

readability kinda suffers when using small components.. or maybe I should switch to displaying names instead of values?

I'll make font sizes configurable, so you can fit more text.
cheers

cool

Hi all, my first post on the forum...woohoo! Thanks Banicka for all your hard work and giving such a useful piece of software to the diy world. I have one suggestion that would be incredibly useful for me and perhaps for others as well. Would it be possible to have the option of rotating vero boards so the strips are vertical? The last two pedals I have designed work better like this as I can have all the connection points running up to the top of the board for the pots / hardware etc. Its not a big deal- I just have a crooked neck from tilting my head over!

Cheers, George.

Sure, somebody else requested that, so I'll try to add it in the next release or the one after it.
Cheers

wow, great progress!!

just a few ideas:

trace cuts should be bigger (look at Electric Warriors picture above: the one below the big red 0,1µF cap is almost not visible.

Funny idea: As you export the pictures as GIF files, why don´t you add the option to make the trace cuts blink?


The overall workflow could be better, if less mouseclicks would be needed for certain operations. I learned that from a word processor named "papyrus", when I compared it to MS Word...

roseblood11 wrote:wow, great progress!!
The overall workflow could be better, if less mouseclicks would be needed for certain operations. I learned that from a word processor named "papyrus", when I compared it to MS Word...

what exactly do you have in mind? I'm open to suggestions

roseblood11 wrote:wow, great progress!!

just a few ideas:

trace cuts should be bigger (look at Electric Warriors picture above: the one below the big red 0,1µF cap is almost not visible.

The size of the trace cuts is adjustable. I make mine as large as the traces

Maybe an idea to have shortkeys. For example "T" for trace "P" for potentiometer etc. etc. this takes away a lot of mouseclicks in the menu.

Another idea for the potentiometers make it selectable for 16 or 22 mm.


Hope i made myself clear.

Thanks for a great program this far

bancika wrote:

roseblood11 wrote:wow, great progress!!
The overall workflow could be better, if less mouseclicks would be needed for certain operations. I learned that from a word processor named "papyrus", when I compared it to MS Word...

what exactly do you have in mind? I'm open to suggestions

In general, I thought that it´s a good idea for any kind of software, to go through every function with the question: How could it be done with less clicks? To be more specific:

- Most important: In version 1 it was easy to place various resistors (for example), because the category remained selected. In version 3 I have to re-select the "resistor" category for every single resistor.

- when you place a component in version 1, the box to enter the value pops up automatically. In version three you have to right click on the component...


- And it´s an interesting feature to have the physical size of a component visible in the layout, but it takes much more time to make a layout usable. Example: I use veroboard most of the time, and I don´t care much about the physical size of a resistor. Very often they stand upright... No problem in version 1, I didn´t have to care about that in any way. In the new version, I have to type in the size of each resistor that stands up even a bit, because if I don´t do that, it´s shown flat and it covers the surrounding holes.

----
one other thing:
If a new piece of veroboard is drawn by mouse, the user has to count the rows and columns. The numbers should be visible while the component is drawn, maybe in the lower frame of the window.

-The new hookup-wire function is amazing for more complex wirings and it´s a great improvement over the first version, where sometimes a wire covered a component. But for very simple wire connections, the old version was faster. Example: The wires that show the external connections at the borders of a veroboard layout. It should be easier to get straight and simple wire, without the need to trim the shape. So maybe just the default settings for the functions could be changed? Maybe like this: If I only click at the beginning and the end of the wire connection, I get a straight (or only slightly curved) wire, and only if more shaping is desired, the additional control points have to be touched...

-in version 1 it was possible to choose the orientation of a transistor or a IC while placing the components, in version 3 the context menu is needed. Slower and less intuitive

-It should be possible to edit some things global: Show values or component names, show/hide color codes...

- the length of capacitors isn´t exact: 0,1 inch should be the distance between two holes on the vero board, but you have to set the lenght to 0,2 inch to get that size.

-it would be really great, if it was possible to add and remove single rows or columns anywhere in the middle of the vero board. Very often you find an existing layout and try to change some things, move some things around, try to make it smaller etc. I often end up with an unused row or column and it would be much easier to remove that than to move half of the components and then to resize the board...

Stickied this thread, and fixed the thanks function in this section!

FOA thank you Bancika, without you, I'm nothing! It's 2 years now when I'm working with DIYLC, what I'm missing mostly is some parts in the menu, like LED's, inductors, LDR's. I haven't seen new version yet, I'll look on it closely tomorrow, and I'll try to add my 0,2 cents

Thank you a lot Sir!

@roseblood11 thanks for suggestions. I agree with pretty much everything and will look into implementation to see what's possible
@modman thanks for the sticky
@sinner thanks for the comment, I hope you'll like the new one. My plan is for it to replace v1 and v2 when it covers all the components and functionalities.

I´d suggest to add a "Thanx * 1000" button to the forum software for people like bancika!
I think without his program I wouldn´t have dared to draw my own layouts...

To address some of the comments I added switchable "Auto-edit mode" and "Continuous Creation" options in the menu. The first one opens the editor each time you create a component, the second one keeps the component "slot" open so you can create components of the same type quickly. This will be out with 3.0.7

I'll think about the rest of the comments.

The first thing I missing compared to v.2 is that shift + mouse tracking doesn't working. I miss this function

Another problem is - when you selecting to insert graphics like the external pcb track image this stays on top, and the parts goes under. Sent to back/bring to front function does nothing.

Also in the image menu (edit selection) scale could have some... scale