7 ms·

Schematics are for understanding what a circuit does. Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits. Veroboard is for prototyping larger medium-spe

Schematics are for understanding what a circuit does. Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits. Veroboard is for prototyping larger medium-speed circuits. Gerbers & a PCB are for production and for prototyping large or high-speed circuits. If the tool could automatically make a 3D breadboard view from a schematic, it'd be pretty neat for beginners. If the tool warned you when the normal parasitic capacitance between breadboard rows would cause problems with a part you're using, that'd be amazing for teaching.

guerrilla 4y ago
Fritzing can kind of make breadboards from schematics, but doesn't have a 3D view... which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D?
- dylan604 4y ago
  >which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D? James Cameron would like a word with you. Seriously though, 3D can show off some things that just might not be realized without it. Not sure of Fritzing's design abilities with layered PCBs, but I could imagine trying to design a layered board and forgetting how tall a component is. Seeing a component "through" the second layer could be useful
  - app4soft 4y ago
    Fritzing is more like 2,5D.[0] [0] https://blog.fritzing.org/2022/06/27/Simulating-Circuits-with-Fritzing https://blog.fritzing.org/2022/06/27/Simulating-Circuits-wit...
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    If your circuit is so complex that you need a breadboard planner and even an fully 3D visualization you have a big problem and you should not be breadboarding but ordering a PCB.
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  > because why do we need 3D? Teaching is much easier when the students can connect the abstract representation to something they can experience.
  - obscurette 4y ago
    I don't have a ton of experience with teaching, but some (6 years various STEM stuff and 3 years math) and I have problem with this statement. It might SEEM easier at first glance, but this kind of interactive 3D/VR/whatever tools make much harder for students to climb up into more abstract levels. I found that it works much better than students can connect schematic with real (I really mean real) thing as early as possible.
    - wellanyway 4y ago
      Any recommendations for introductory level course/book? I'm a web dev and I know next to nothing about PCBs, electronics etc. Ideally I'd like to be able to open up, say tv remote, look at the board and have at least some idea of what the top left part does vs bottom right one, that sort of thing.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  I’m not sure how valuable it would be in this case, but 3D visualisation of PCBs is extensively used in pro circuit board design. It’s very easy to place something in 2D and not realise that something will totally clash with it. Even when you have the components all set up with heights and clearance rules, it can be things like connectors where you have something blocking it so the connector is technically clear (so passes DRC) but you can’t actually plug it in because you have a big component in the way! The next level is then importing enclosures and things to make sure things fit and can actually be assembled. It’s interesting too that there are all sorts of mistakes that become a bit more obvious when you look at it in 3D than in the 2D view.
nomel 4y ago
Maybe a checkbox to "show parasitic components".
- kurthr 4y ago
  Exactly! Allow idealized networks, but also insert reasonably sized/modeled parasitics to be inserted so you can see why your beautiful plan isn't really. That's not just capacitances! At speed the resistance of a long trace or the inductance to a neighbor are big deals. Meanwhile the internal PCB planes of Power/Gnd are necessary low impedance bypass that no packaged cap could provide.
analog31 4y ago
This is a tangent, but having worked with digital circuits for 40 years, the improvements in chips have made circuit construction -- even breadboarding -- vastly more forgiving than ever before. I've run 10 MHz clocks on breadboards and 100 MHz SPI bus on 2 layer boards that were not designed with extreme care. And, it's a fast precision ADC that's meeting its datasheet specs on that board. No doubt the parasitics and other nasties still come into play, but it's still amazing how much faster we can go before they start to bite.
- akiselev 4y ago
  It also helps a lot when you get a well made breadboard from BusBoard [1] instead of the Aliexpress special. [1] https://www.busboard.com/ https://www.busboard.com/
  - analog31 4y ago
    I just get the ones that the EEs throw away when someone retires. ;-)
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  That's been a funny thing for me. I'm not an electrical engineer, at all. My electrical knowledge is an introductory electromagnetics course I had to take in college that I've mostly forgotten, reading/watching EEVblog, other internet sources, playing around with cheap and/or old parts, reading whatever I can find, etc. I've made some retrocomputing boards (<= 50 MHz) (8051, 286, 68010, 68030, etc.) and haven't had much of a problem. No idea what the EMI looks like though. Greatest goof I had so far was an old part who's datasheet didn't mention that the signal output was open collector so I had to bodge a resistor in. Mostly just followed advice I found on the internet -> 4 layer boards can be had for very cheap these days (JLCPCB does 10 for $30 w/ ENIG boards up to 10cm x 10cm), so I followed the "just do yourself a favor and get the 4 layers boards so you can make ground and power planes" advice. Used a tool to compute minimum trace spacing to stay under a certain capacitance for a specific copper weight, board thickness, dielectric type, etc. Probably my crowning achievement at this point is making an 1.8V LVDS to TMDS level shifter board so I can get HDMI 1.2a (4x 1.65 Gbps lanes + sidebands) out of an FPGA board I repurposed from some cryptomining hardware I bought on eBay. Had to learn how to do soldering using a stencil, paste, hot air station, and a hotplate because no one is hand soldering 0.4mm QFN packages. 0402 are the smallest thing I can do by hand. Next thing I want to try is breaking out a small BGA. Managed to get a few Lattice iCE40HX8K's in the CT256 package (256 balls @ 0.8mm pitch BGA). What hurts is how patent/royalty/industry interest group encumbered that nearly everything modern is. Want to do PCIe? Join PCIe SIG. Want to do USB? Join USB-IF. Want to support SD cards? Pay a bunch to SDA. Actually their patents expired so maybe you can do native SD mode now without much fear. HDMI is awful, DisplayPort requires you to join VESA, MIPI for CSI and DSI devices, etc.
thewileyone 4y ago
"parasitic capacitance" ... I shudder recalling the nights wasted in the analog lab due to this.
xxs 4y ago
>Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits. Reminds me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR9TweWf3w8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR9TweWf3w8 Sine oscillator (no ICs), 10K load, 24+GHz on a breadboard.
robotguy 4y ago
Schematics HAVE TO define which components are in the circuit and how they are connected (unless you really want to write net lists). Schematics SHOULD help readers to understand what a circuit does. Especially in, let's say, "prosumer" boards (like boards designed by small companies for hobbyists) I keep seeing schematics that are designed to make it easy for the dev to get them done and NOT to communicate the circuit theory. It's exactly like writing code without any formatting or comments. As far as I'm concerned connecting components by net name is as bad or worse than a GOTO. \rant

guerrilla 4y ago

Fritzing can kind of make breadboards from schematics, but doesn't have a 3D view... which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D?

dylan604 4y ago
>which I'm fine with because why do we need 3D? James Cameron would like a word with you. Seriously though, 3D can show off some things that just might not be realized without it. Not sure of Fritzing's design abilities with layered PCBs, but I could imagine trying to design a layered board and forgetting how tall a component is. Seeing a component "through" the second layer could be useful
- app4soft 4y ago
  Fritzing is more like 2,5D.[0] [0] https://blog.fritzing.org/2022/06/27/Simulating-Circuits-with-Fritzing https://blog.fritzing.org/2022/06/27/Simulating-Circuits-wit...
- goodpoint 4y ago
  If your circuit is so complex that you need a breadboard planner and even an fully 3D visualization you have a big problem and you should not be breadboarding but ordering a PCB.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
> because why do we need 3D? Teaching is much easier when the students can connect the abstract representation to something they can experience.
- obscurette 4y ago
  I don't have a ton of experience with teaching, but some (6 years various STEM stuff and 3 years math) and I have problem with this statement. It might SEEM easier at first glance, but this kind of interactive 3D/VR/whatever tools make much harder for students to climb up into more abstract levels. I found that it works much better than students can connect schematic with real (I really mean real) thing as early as possible.
  - wellanyway 4y ago
    Any recommendations for introductory level course/book? I'm a web dev and I know next to nothing about PCBs, electronics etc. Ideally I'd like to be able to open up, say tv remote, look at the board and have at least some idea of what the top left part does vs bottom right one, that sort of thing.
stephen_g 4y ago
I’m not sure how valuable it would be in this case, but 3D visualisation of PCBs is extensively used in pro circuit board design. It’s very easy to place something in 2D and not realise that something will totally clash with it. Even when you have the components all set up with heights and clearance rules, it can be things like connectors where you have something blocking it so the connector is technically clear (so passes DRC) but you can’t actually plug it in because you have a big component in the way! The next level is then importing enclosures and things to make sure things fit and can actually be assembled. It’s interesting too that there are all sorts of mistakes that become a bit more obvious when you look at it in 3D than in the 2D view.

nomel 4y ago

Maybe a checkbox to "show parasitic components".

kurthr 4y ago
Exactly! Allow idealized networks, but also insert reasonably sized/modeled parasitics to be inserted so you can see why your beautiful plan isn't really. That's not just capacitances! At speed the resistance of a long trace or the inductance to a neighbor are big deals. Meanwhile the internal PCB planes of Power/Gnd are necessary low impedance bypass that no packaged cap could provide.

analog31 4y ago

This is a tangent, but having worked with digital circuits for 40 years, the improvements in chips have made circuit construction -- even breadboarding -- vastly more forgiving than ever before. I've run 10 MHz clocks on breadboards and 100 MHz SPI bus on 2 layer boards that were not designed with extreme care. And, it's a fast precision ADC that's meeting its datasheet specs on that board. No doubt the parasitics and other nasties still come into play, but it's still amazing how much faster we can go before they start to bite.

akiselev 4y ago
It also helps a lot when you get a well made breadboard from BusBoard [1] instead of the Aliexpress special. [1] https://www.busboard.com/ https://www.busboard.com/
- analog31 4y ago
  I just get the ones that the EEs throw away when someone retires. ;-)
Teknoman117 4y ago
That's been a funny thing for me. I'm not an electrical engineer, at all. My electrical knowledge is an introductory electromagnetics course I had to take in college that I've mostly forgotten, reading/watching EEVblog, other internet sources, playing around with cheap and/or old parts, reading whatever I can find, etc. I've made some retrocomputing boards (<= 50 MHz) (8051, 286, 68010, 68030, etc.) and haven't had much of a problem. No idea what the EMI looks like though. Greatest goof I had so far was an old part who's datasheet didn't mention that the signal output was open collector so I had to bodge a resistor in. Mostly just followed advice I found on the internet -> 4 layer boards can be had for very cheap these days (JLCPCB does 10 for $30 w/ ENIG boards up to 10cm x 10cm), so I followed the "just do yourself a favor and get the 4 layers boards so you can make ground and power planes" advice. Used a tool to compute minimum trace spacing to stay under a certain capacitance for a specific copper weight, board thickness, dielectric type, etc. Probably my crowning achievement at this point is making an 1.8V LVDS to TMDS level shifter board so I can get HDMI 1.2a (4x 1.65 Gbps lanes + sidebands) out of an FPGA board I repurposed from some cryptomining hardware I bought on eBay. Had to learn how to do soldering using a stencil, paste, hot air station, and a hotplate because no one is hand soldering 0.4mm QFN packages. 0402 are the smallest thing I can do by hand. Next thing I want to try is breaking out a small BGA. Managed to get a few Lattice iCE40HX8K's in the CT256 package (256 balls @ 0.8mm pitch BGA). What hurts is how patent/royalty/industry interest group encumbered that nearly everything modern is. Want to do PCIe? Join PCIe SIG. Want to do USB? Join USB-IF. Want to support SD cards? Pay a bunch to SDA. Actually their patents expired so maybe you can do native SD mode now without much fear. HDMI is awful, DisplayPort requires you to join VESA, MIPI for CSI and DSI devices, etc.

thewileyone 4y ago

"parasitic capacitance" ... I shudder recalling the nights wasted in the analog lab due to this.

xxs 4y ago

>Breadboards are for prototyping small low-speed circuits. Reminds me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR9TweWf3w8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR9TweWf3w8 Sine oscillator (no ICs), 10K load, 24+GHz on a breadboard.

robotguy 4y ago

Schematics HAVE TO define which components are in the circuit and how they are connected (unless you really want to write net lists). Schematics SHOULD help readers to understand what a circuit does. Especially in, let's say, "prosumer" boards (like boards designed by small companies for hobbyists) I keep seeing schematics that are designed to make it easy for the dev to get them done and NOT to communicate the circuit theory. It's exactly like writing code without any formatting or comments. As far as I'm concerned connecting components by net name is as bad or worse than a GOTO. \rant