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software to help reconstruct circuit diagram?

I'm trying to debug a circuit board but have no circuit diagram.

I could take a picture of the top and bottom of the board (only one copper layer), line them up in photoshop (flip one of them) to re-construct the circuit diagram.

Is there a software to help me do this: import a photos of a circuit board, draw the components, connect them with wires. At this point the circuit diagram would look very messy because it is optimized for circuit board layout, not for reading. So I need the software to take this circuit diagram and re-arrange it so that it looks good.

It's the opposite of a PCB layout software.

Reply to
james
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*Some* of this can be done with MasterCAM and its ilk.
Reply to
D Yuniskis

That's what I do, except that I use Irfanview for the purpose.

Taking a photo of the bottom of the PCB is usually easy enough. However, the component side is usually cluttered with parts requiring considerable guesswork as to the location of traces and pads. When I tried to use this method to reverse engineer a messy power supply, I gave up and used a PCB layout program instead. For example:

I used the easily obtained circuit side photograph as a template, and did my best to reconstruct the board layout and traces.

More:

I found this with Google. No experience or opinion:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

board,

diagram

Constructing a node-map may also help

Reply to
N_Cook

copper

After scanning in use negative and excess contrast and edge detection etc to highlight tracks and then print off at larger scale to make more manageable, overlaying by hand main components. Find the main rails and mark as red, black and green say for +/-/0 rails . Leave out caps in the first pass in unravelling. Use node-map to predict likely placements of components in logical schematic.

Reply to
N_Cook

this page lists electronic design apps some are freeware

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Reply to
Man-wai Chang

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