Spent my Sunday afternoon trying to learn DipTrace. I felt like a Windows person trying to learn Linux. We can dismiss the vagaries of the UI; I'll never figure out why it keeps switching into draw connector mode on its own... Like a demon, it was. I had unwanted traces all over my schematic.
No. what got me was trying to use the verification tool. I was shocked to see a two page error list. And being unfamiliar with the notation, it took me a while to grok even where an error occurred. I did eventually learn if you double clicked the error,something became highlighted in red, but it took me a little while longer to find the problem. It started with an easy one, once I lucked upon it, since there were so many errors. When looking, I could see a gap between my connections! I fixed that.
I was convinced I couldn't see any other errors! They were mostly no connection errors. Then I changed my perspective. Lets assume there is no connection. I separated the components and connected them with a short trace. Voili! It appears DipTrace doesn't like two components connecting directly together; you have to draw a line between the terminus points for the program to understand what you want.
Am I crazy? Has anyone else had this problem?
Then I went into routing. And gave up for the night. It seems Diptrace cannot count. My schematic had 4 DIP chips... The PCB that DipTrace produced had twelve chips. Twelve! Even if you counted the individual gates, you don't get twelve...
Are these anomalies typical?
I've attached the schematic in a zip file.
No. what got me was trying to use the verification tool. I was shocked to see a two page error list. And being unfamiliar with the notation, it took me a while to grok even where an error occurred. I did eventually learn if you double clicked the error,something became highlighted in red, but it took me a little while longer to find the problem. It started with an easy one, once I lucked upon it, since there were so many errors. When looking, I could see a gap between my connections! I fixed that.
I was convinced I couldn't see any other errors! They were mostly no connection errors. Then I changed my perspective. Lets assume there is no connection. I separated the components and connected them with a short trace. Voili! It appears DipTrace doesn't like two components connecting directly together; you have to draw a line between the terminus points for the program to understand what you want.
Am I crazy? Has anyone else had this problem?
Then I went into routing. And gave up for the night. It seems Diptrace cannot count. My schematic had 4 DIP chips... The PCB that DipTrace produced had twelve chips. Twelve! Even if you counted the individual gates, you don't get twelve...
Are these anomalies typical?
I've attached the schematic in a zip file.
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