Diptrace Tutorial: Layout

Find out how to lay out a circuit board in Diptrace with this video tutorial.

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in the previous tutorial I showed you
how to do a schematic of a simple
electrical circuit in this tutorial I'm
going to show you how to put that on
printed circuit board so let's start by
opening up the schematic in our
schematic program and to convert this to
a circuit board and dipped race it's
quite straightforward you just hit ctrl
be and dipped race is going to take
these parts and the footprints and copy
them to the PCB layout program this is
the PCB layout program and usually
people start by laying out the board
itself not to set the board the shape of
the board use this board outline tool
right here click on that click on the
first point where you want the board
usually I put it at a 00 the design
origin and then click on each of the
corners on the last corner you just
right click and hit enter and that's
your board outline you can change it by
hovering over and dragging the points if
you want make a bigger or smaller as you
go through the writing process now once
you have the board outline we're going
to take all the parts and we're going to
put them on the board where we like them
to be so it works just like the
schematic program you just click on the
footprint and drag it around and there
you go use spacebar to rotate if you
want to rotate it and you can use this
rectangle select tool if you want to
grab several components at the same time
how you lay it out is up to you keep in
mind that if you're laying out for
instance and microcontroller you
probably want to put the bypass caps
near the VDS s pairs like with the
propeller and the schematic doesn't
communicate all of that the electrical
or physical information so you want to
keep that in mind as you're doing the
layout for instance i'm putting the
bypass caps for the voltage regulator
closer to the voltage regulator right
move these closer you can see Dick Tracy
uses this nice a grid to lay things out
you can change
the picture of the grid you with this
drop-down if you want to find our
control
you can also zoom in using the plus
button on your keyboard and zoom out
using the minus if you see these blue
lines here between each of the parts
this is called the the rat's nest it
defines it shows you where all of the
pins are going to be connected together
we have been routed them yet
we're just about to and what we'll do is
click on the pins and connect them as
the blue lines are telling us to and
then we're done all the blue lines will
be gone so circuit board is made out of
multiple layers and in-depth race you
can take a look at each of these
different layers right here there's a
silkscreen layer which is that the
printed layer on top the solder mask
layer which is the the resist or the
colored part of the board the pace layer
this is where the solder paste will go
if you're doing surface mount design is
usually a top copper the the traces on
the top side of the border bottom copper
the traces on the bottom side of the
board and if you have a multi-layer
board you'll have more trace layers if
you're doing a two-layer board you're
going to have traces on the top of the
board and on the bottom the board if
you're doing a one-layer board you're
just gonna have traces on the top if
your design has traces on the bottom and
you sent into the manufacturer they'll
ignore it if you've asked them to do a
single layer board so keep that in mind
bottom pace just like the top paste same
thing with the silk and the mask and the
assembly layer this is just a notes and
kind of assembly information it's not
going to get manufacture anything it's
to assist people when they're putting
together your design and then the board
outline shows the board itself so as I'm
moving stuff around here i noted that
this battery jumper one side is negative
one side of pot is positive you can put
arbitrary shapes and information on any
of these layers by simply using this
drop-down here
selecting the layer you'd like to put
the
a text or other information and what
information you want i want to put a
minus here so that when i'm assembling
this I know which hole or which pad
should should go to the black wire on
the battery box and that's that one
right there and I can put a plus as well
on the other side now the the grid on
dipped race is pretty course right now i
can either i use a finer picture on the
on the grid or i can hit f11 to kind of
hide the stop using the grib 44 fine
pitch placement and then when I'm done I
hit f11 again so that's the battery
jumper looks pretty good and I can
select all these guys here try got them
all and move them around now I i'm
pretty happy with the way everything is
put let's put one more thing was put
some text on the silkscreen put i select
the text tool make sure we're on the
right layer click here and just right to
whatever we want to write right-clicking
we're done and then we can click on what
we just placed there we can shrink it
and move it over difference also
supports set to type on so you just
right-click due to truck truetype and
you can change to a system phone or
whatever and that's helpful if you want
something that looks nice so you want to
do some some fancy artwork or even if
you want to just write as some
information for the user or to help
yourself like we did with these pluses
here
the next step is to do the routing so
the way we do we the routing right here
is through this rap manual selection we
can start wherever you want
usually you're gonna do some routing
you're going to look at you going to say
ok I need to change some stuff then
you're going to do some unrau ting then
move things around
it's an iterative process it's not hard
to do just it takes some time so let's
start here why not
so that's our first ride and you see
this this red line this is an actual
copper trace its going to be on the
board and you see the blue line
connecting these two pins has
disappeared as you go through the
routing the blue lines are going to
disappear and that's your indication
that they're connected but they're there
we go do this here
so for instance looking at this I
realise probably easier to to rotate
this I spacebar to rotate it will keep
the minus information there and you know
what if I know which pin is is the
negative then I can deduce that positive
so we'll just use the negative and will
write the negative that's our negative
cancel and then we can keep on routing
now I want to keep this space in front
of it open probably yeah there we go
it's pretty ugly routing a cancel their
but it gives you an idea of how to go
and one of the best things to do is look
at other peoples work to give you ideas
on how to improve your routing you go on
gadget gangster all of our boards most
of the boards are done and dip tray so
you can describe those files off the
project pages one little tip so that all
this stuff is the this is the negative
net if you right click on it we just
change the name of it from NetZero to
gnd and that will just help us to
understand how things are connected and
we're just gonna keep on going through
the routing here I want to do a single
sided board just to keep it as
inexpensive as possible is that
and the one last pin to connect is this
negative right here
one more
here we come
pretty ugly board had been pretty ugly
routing but I hope it gives you a an
idea on how to do some simple routing on
dipped race there are a couple more tips
and tricks and we'll go over that in
another tutorial but that should be
enough to get you started on doing a
basic circuit board design also like I
suggested I take a look at other peoples
work and will give you an idea on on how
to do basic routing