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2. CAD

This week I worked on learning and revising CAD programs

Research

I know some basic concept of CAD from my highschool years. I’ve had some experience with AutoDesk AutoCAD and SketchUp . For the first models i’d start from SU, trying other softwares after i’ve made myself comfortable again with it.

sketchup.com

fritzing.org

autodesk.com/products/eagle/

Examples

Sketchup

It allows the objects posted in the “3d wharehouse” to be embedded into webpages. This is the first thing i’ve made in a long time, the RGB LED ~~I’ve chosen~~ I tought I were using for the matrix, see under the PCB for the pins.

I ended up not using this LED in my final project due to the fact that i’d have to solder each one of them 6 times for each cell of the matrix but in the end was useful to get back to using 3D design softwares.

Fritzing

Although surely not meant to be a 2D design tool is useful to get the visual idea of a circuit or just how to place components on a breadboard then you’ll be one screenshot away from an image that resembles pretty closely reality.

sketch done with fritzing

Eagle

Eagle is a powerful and rather easy tool for its capability, I used it for the week 6 - Electronics Design assignment.

With Eagle you can design PCBs starting from the schematic and it has an autorouter function to route the PCB traces. This function can be tweaked by adding rules to the DRC (design rules). the DRC are like a word processor spelling check that you can set to check every aspect of the PCB, including:

  • Clearance between traces
  • Traces’ size
  • Distance between objects
  • Dimensions for rings and pads

enter image description here

My thoughts on

Sketchup

  • Works nice and intuitively to me
  • Has some useful function like the warehouse where you can share and get models for free
  • The 2017 edition is available for free

Surely a tool I will use again.

Fritzing as a desing tool

I cannot say if it’s way faster than drawing with a “standard” 2d design tool or not because on one hand you have all components ready to be placed and connected but on the other is really slower than other options, plus you need some time to edit the result.

I don’t think I’ll use it often in future for this kind of works but it was worth a try.

Eagle

It’s surely a great program for electronics design, both for PCB and schemes, although it has some minor problems (for me, as i’m used to other tools) for groups and selection of multiple objects. I can’t really stand right clicking for using group options after i selected multiple objects.

Written with StackEdit.