Quote:
Originally Posted by DonaldStott
Next stage is to use the Generate/Switch to Board command which (allegedly) converts the schematic to a PCB layout - this is the stage I am at currently with a PCB layout that shows a jumble of components and a tangle of spaghetti! It's possible to move everything, components and connections, and to resize the board (and much else) but I don't know if I have the staying power for this ... hopefully my "stubborn" gene will kick-in at some point and I will persevere.  |
Some people will tell you, and I'm one of them, that the art of a good PCB layout is in the component placement. There is no software on earth which can make a good job of this, as far as I'm aware. It's a manual task, best suited to the human brain.
I do a certain amount of this professionally. The last board layout I did contained nearly 380 components, so the tangle of wires would have been completely unmanageable! The way I like to do it is to import a small number of parts from the schematic to the board at a time, in reasonably logical chunks (power supply, amplifier stages, CPU, output stage, whatever makes sense for your project). Then you can roughly lay out each chunk without getting lost. I find it helps to be able to see the schematic diagram at the same time - print it out or view it on a second monitor. Then you can place the components in a sensible way, so those connected to each other are close to each other, and the right way round, and so on.
Once each little chunk of the circuit is placed, you can move them around and adjust them to snuggle neatly together in to a board layout. Make sure there's space for the component identifiers if you're adding a silk screen layer.
Once this is done, adding the tracks between the components is actually the easy bit.
A result of all this should be that your CAD software will produce, among other things, a diagram like the one in the original post, which I'd call an 'assembly drawing'. It's up to you to put the component identifiers in the right places, of course. I always include one in the package of data I send to the manufacturer. It makes talking about the board and finding problems much easier.
Chris