New LibrePCB user. I used to design boards as part of my job, but that was several decades ago and I’ve forgotten most of it. Im 79 so stuff comes way slower.
I want to start with a simple manual layout board that needs no schematic. I need to create a 3.25” square single sided board with just several rectangular copper pads on one side and several holes. Stuff gets soldered to the pads. So my basic questions:
Can I change dimension units once a project is started (mm to inch)
Is there any way to size the board or a rectangular area by just click and draw a corner (like a drawing program)? or at least stay vertical/horizontal? Making something square seems like a pain.
I assume I use the DrawPlane took to make a rectangular copper pad? Is it OK if planes overlap?
Is there any way to get drawing “guidelines” to help align object placement on the board (like in photoshop)?
Not yet. We will implement this some time in future. At the moment the easiest ways are:
Either set the grid e.g. to 0.25" and draw the outline polygon manually
Or just modify the properties of the automatically added board outline polygon to enter the coordinates.
Hmm not really. Planes have no solder mask opening. You would have to add an additional polygon to create a solder mask opening. Generally it is recommended not to draw pads directly in the board editor, but create a footprint in the library and add the footprint to the board then. Adding arbitrary pads directly to the board will be supported in the next release which should be ready in January.
Not really yet, we have a feature request open for this. What you can do is to draw polygons on the Alignment layer, but it’s just a graphical help without any snapping functionality or so. And whenever you need to place an object ob specific coordinates, you can use the properties dialog to manually enter X/Y coordinates.
RE: Changing dimensions: good to know I can change dimensions, but how do you do it? I can’t find any menu/option on the screen to change dimensions.
The board I need to make will have no solder mask. in that case, will drawplane work OK? I suppose I could also use a series of overlaping wide traces to do the same thing?
Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it. Nice product, great job so far!
The dimension is specified as a normal polygon, therefore you just need to modify the polygon properties which can be done by double-clicking (or right-click → Properties). In case you deleted the outline polygon, you need to re-draw it. See Draw Outlines.
Hmm yeah in that case, planes should generally work and are similar to overlapping traces.