Data Sheet

83
PCB LAYOUT TUTORIAL
Introduction
The purpose of this tutorial is to familiarize you as quickly as possible with the main features of
the PCB Layout, to the point that you can use the package for real work. Users with modest
computer literacy should find it possible to learn the package and produce their first board within
a day or two.
The tutorial proceeds by taking you through worked examples involving all the important
aspects of the package including:
Basic techniques for placement and routing.
3D Board Visualisation.
Netlist based design including both manual and automatic routing.
More advanced editing techniques such as block editing and route editing.
Report generation.
Hard copy generation.
Library part creation.
We do urge you to work right the way through the tutorial exercises as many things are pointed
out that if missed will result in much wasted time in the long run. Also, having worked through
the tutorial and thus got a basic grasp of the concepts behind the package you will find it much
easier to absorb the material presented in the reference chapters.
Note that throughout this tutorial (and the documentation as a whole) reference is
made to keyboard shortcuts as a method of executing specific commands. The
shortcuts specified are the default or system keyboard accelerators as provided
when the software is shipped to you. Please be aware that if you have configured
your own keyboard accelerators the shortcuts mentioned may not be valid. You can
configure your own keyboard shortcuts via the System - Set Keyboard Mapping
command.
Menus toolbars and icons all switch when you change between tabs to reflect the
functionality of the module you are working on. When we talk about menu
commands or icons in this tutorial we assume that the PCB layout tab is selected.
The menu contents will be very different if the schematic tab is selected!
Overview of the Layout Editor
We shall assume at this point that you have installed the package, and that the current directory
is some convenient work area on your hard disk. This tutorial is a direct continuation of project
we started in the schematic capture tutorial so we will start by loading the project file with the
completed schematic.