EZPC PCB layout problem

What's the problem? Is it that you get too many different styles, or that adding a component overrides the styles you set in the library? If the latter, settings->preferences->interaction gets you a "keep library style" tick box, for the former just edit the styles to be identical (settings->styles).

Paul Burke

The problems start when you have components on different PCB designs drawn from different libraries. You might have say a connector from the connector library with its pads called 'style1' on one PCB. Then you make another PCB with a different component which also has a different pad size, but also called 'style1'. It sort of works ok, in that if you do this and place both on the same PCB, one gets automagically renamed to something like style1-1. But it you merge two existing PCBs by cut and paste, the renaming doesnt happen, and one of the two pad sizes becomes overwritten with the other. And cut and paste is still the only way to create a board panel containing several different PCBs all belonging to one job, with a consistent numbering scheme for the components so that an automated assembly house can handle the job.

I already went through and renamed a large number of styles to try and overcome this, but its a tedious job, and I still cant see any way around it. One or two is fine, but a couple of dozen just gets boring, and I have better things to do. There are several thousand components across all the libraries, all of which need fixing to get this right. There are even some real anomalies, like in the IPC782 library, where someone managed to create pads with length less than width, and you cant edit these at all. Even without this, you still first have to realise that a component has had its pad sizes changed, go back and edit all its pads to the right style, then update it on the design to reflect the changes. I quite like some of the other features in this program, but the styles stuff is driving me crazy.

I assume that the old trick of starting the numbering at 1 for the first board, 100 (or 1000) for the second board, and so on won't do then? Better ask Peter in support, he usually comes up with a workround.

But the libraries always have been the weakest part of EasyPC. They feel as though they are put together by bored students on holiday jobs, who have never actually done a design, and there's no one overlooking the process closely enough.

Paul Burke

This is arguably true of many PCB packages, and presumably the reason almost everyone who's serious about PCB design ends up making their own footprints anyway.

My own suspicion is that any time someone makes a new schematic capture/PCB program, they hack together enough of an import routine so that they can import some other vendor's libraries of parts such that they can immediately boast how their software comes with 50,000 symbols & footprints, or whatever...

I've never seen a PCB package that came with footprints segregated by, e.g., wave soldering vs. reflow soldering, even though many data sheets suggest different footprints for each (much longer "run ups" for wave soldering).

And I've previously related my anecdote about Protel v3 where the footprint for the 0.1" spaced dual-row headers with square pins had a drill size a little bigger than 25 mils rather than 1.414*25 mils... :-(

Agree about how the libraries seem to be made. In fact Peter of EZPC admitted that the main libraries were imported from the ancient DOS version of EZPC, and havent been changed much since.

I can handle component renumbering, although it gets more complicated when you have one instrument with say 5 different boards, and you want a PCB panel with 6 copies of each of the 5 boards. The real issue is how to stop the styles from overwriting each other. I have no problem creating my own footprints, but fail to see why I should have to modify every footprint in say a SM library, 0604, 0805, 1206 etc, in both C and R versions, amounting to several hundred parts, just to get some pads so that they work properly.

EZPC seems to be going to creeping featureism, like all the rest, more bells and whistles, no fixes for basic internal flaws.

Because you are not using a "feature", rather you are hacking a panel together when it wasn't designed to do so.

Get a program that panelizes gerber, instead.

Basic cut and paste is hardly a 'feature' used for hacking, just a tool for doing things computers are supposed to do well, doing mindless repetition.

And I can panelise gerbers too in EZPC, but that doesnt solve the problem.

The cut and paste was to create identical circuits on a board, no more. You are misusing it.

And if you panelize REAL GERBER, it should make no difference AT ALL what your software names part decals and such because gerber doesn't contain that info at all. You need a gerber editor with panelization feature. Or, keep hacking at it in ways the software wasn't meant to do, but shut up about it not working right.

Like this at $49:

I tend to sympathise with Adrian in that claiming a relatively simple function such as "copy and paste" is only applicable to certain situations ("create identical circuits on a board") rather than a more generic "just paste what I tell you verbatim!" -- as one expects with contemporary software -- is a pretty lame excuse to let your programmers not bother to fully implement the functionality in the first place. At the very least EZPC gets a strike for not building ROBUST functionality into their software.

With many PCB packages this isn't true (you can do your own panelization just fine -- I used to do this back in the old Protel v3 days, as it would happily import Gerber files that had no electrical connectivity implied -- everything was just a graphics object -- and cutting and pasting were easy), so it puts EZPC in a competitively worse position relative to them.