Edit on:Any interest in a Kicad pet?

Mathematical tools, physics simulators, CAD, CNC, etc.
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mister_electronico
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The end

#31 Post by mister_electronico »

Could have cast one pet you installed all at once, but there was a time I did not like what he did and why I did it separately.

Well if you install tell me that this works.

I so far everything I've tried works fine, but still keep running learning Kicad.

It's been a big effort but I think it was worth it ...

See you.



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interesting link libraries.

#32 Post by mister_electronico »

interesting link libraries.

http://smisioto.no-ip.org/elettronica/k ... cad-en.htm

and

http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php

See you.



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Moose On The Loose
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Re: interesting link libraries.

#33 Post by Moose On The Loose »

mister_electronico wrote:interesting link libraries.

http://smisioto.no-ip.org/elettronica/k ... cad-en.htm

and

http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php

See you.
I've used my version of Kicad to layout a PCB. I made my own versions of the 3 footprints I needed.

When I get a little time, I will look into the issue of the PCB footprints and the size of the libraries. I suspect that I can shrink the total size way down. I found many libraries repeated footprints in some cases under the same name in different files and in others with different names but the same footprint.

I have found that it is best to make my own library of footprints after checking each one from a library from someone else. This way the footprints I actually use are the ones in the library.

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Hi Moose On The Loose

#34 Post by mister_electronico »

Hi Moose On The Loose have you tried to ride Kicad libraries outside the pupsave, such as in /mnt/home/kicad.

I really do not care that the library is huge, but this way does not take me RAM.

See you.



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Re: Hi Moose On The Loose

#35 Post by Moose On The Loose »

mister_electronico wrote:Hi Moose On The Loose have you tried to ride Kicad libraries outside the pupsave, such as in /mnt/home/kicad.

I really do not care that the library is huge, but this way does not take me RAM.

See you.
I'm running a full install so it doesn't matter too much about size from that point of view. The idea of making them smaller was for others who may run as frugal.

I have also played with putting the libraries in a SFS that is not loaded at boot but is instead opened via a loopback once the system is running. This allows them to be compressed but unfortunately you can't change the ones in the SFS on the fly.

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A problem with Kicad and how to fix it.

#36 Post by mister_electronico »

When I exported the component layer or tracks layer in Kicad to pdf or SVG, appeared the following problem. According seen in the image that I put down.

This created me great frustration, when we want to create a PCB manually.



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The solution

#37 Post by mister_electronico »

Someone may have another solution but I found this.

Export layers file Kicad to SVG and then using the linux command "RVSG-convert" this command is default Slacko Puppy-5.6.

And run next command order:

component_layer = 1.svg

# rsvg-convert -f pdf -o 1.pdf 1.svg

And the problem will be solved.


Saying that SVG files are opened by default with InkLite program default Slacko Puppy-5.6.

When print pdf file removing print margins to adjust the size of the PCB.

I hope it's useful for someone.

Greetings


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Re: A problem with Kicad and how to fix it.

#38 Post by Moose On The Loose »

mister_electronico wrote:When I exported the component layer or tracks layer in Kicad to pdf or SVG, appeared the following problem. According seen in the image that I put down.

This created me great frustration, when we want to create a PCB manually.
That looks like a bug in the SVG export process. The Gerbers I made for a PCB called out a round tool opening and moved that over the length of the trace. This makes the ends of the trace 1/2 circles.

Unfortunately, I am still thinking about code at work so when I get home I don't feel like doing code. I was thinking that a Gerber to SVG converter external to Kicad would be a very handy tool to have.

A gerber looks like this:

Code: Select all

G54D10*
G54D11*
X59865Y-48230D02*
X59865Y-48287D01*
X59827Y-48344D01*
X59789Y-48373D01*
X59713Y-48402D01*
X59560Y-48430D01*
X59370Y-48430D01*
X59218Y-48402D01*
The "D02" vs "D01" is the control of whether it is a move of the light source or an actual draw action. The "G54" is the selection of the tool to draw with.

It seems to me that doing it as a bash script would be good enough. At each place where the tool starts or ends, an image of the tool can be done on one pass through the file and then on a second pass through the file, the lines can be done for the motions of the pens. This would look exactly like the Gerber's results even if the order things are drawn is different.

If it rains this weekend, I may do a bash script to do this.

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#39 Post by James186282 »

I just wanted to report in that I installed the KiCAD pet and it worked without any changes. I'm using a Gateway Pentium 4 computer with an NVIDIA 7600GT display. I'm using UPUP Raring 3.9.9.2

I'm mostly interested in the large libraries of components that are floating around with the idea of converting them to the program I use.

Thanks for your work to get KiCAD going on Puppy. Its very much appreciated!
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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#40 Post by Moose On The Loose »

James186282 wrote:I just wanted to report in that I installed the KiCAD pet and it worked without any changes. I'm using a Gateway Pentium 4 computer with an NVIDIA 7600GT display. I'm using UPUP Raring 3.9.9.2

I'm mostly interested in the large libraries of components that are floating around with the idea of converting them to the program I use.

Thanks for your work to get KiCAD going on Puppy. Its very much appreciated!
I am currently running the Windows version of Kicad via wine. The last several attempts to get enough things installed onto my computer to make the compile work have failed. It seems the newer the version of Kicad, the more stuff you need. For now I have given up on making a new native version. I don't have a lot of free time to work on it.

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#41 Post by James186282 »

Moose On The Loose wrote:
James186282 wrote:I just wanted to report in that I installed the KiCAD pet and it worked without any changes. I'm using a Gateway Pentium 4 computer with an NVIDIA 7600GT display. I'm using UPUP Raring 3.9.9.2

I'm mostly interested in the large libraries of components that are floating around with the idea of converting them to the program I use.

Thanks for your work to get KiCAD going on Puppy. Its very much appreciated!
I am currently running the Windows version of Kicad via wine. The last several attempts to get enough things installed onto my computer to make the compile work have failed. It seems the newer the version of Kicad, the more stuff you need. For now I have given up on making a new native version. I don't have a lot of free time to work on it.
I'm sorry to hear that but I guess I understand. Programming is taking a seriously bad (in my opinion) direction. I've set up a system to compile with and have a handful of programs that compile without a serious amount of work to dig up include files or alter the make file to compile the "universal" C or C++ or C# or whatever next.

Babbling insane rant alarm....
I should stop moaning and groaning because I've seen some folks (not enough) interested in making small compact and understandable code that compiles without the mountain of work. It might be me but there seems like a lack of comments in the source almost always goes along with the crazy huge pain in the arse it is to get things to compile correctly. I'm no genius but I've written a CAM system with tens of thousands of lines of source that fit on an 8051 and it compiled in seconds (not minutes) and I never needed a Make file or worse an IDE. IDE (Integrated Development Excrement) Wow do I hate IDEs. Who has time for this? It ends up being much more work to learn how to set this up and operate it then it does to write the code. The integrated editor is almost always nothing like the editor I use (Understand and have all the sharp edges sanded off) And these "optimized" code claims. I thought the whole idea of C was that the source is supposed to be able to go from on type of CPU to another but I keep seeing things like ARM version of Linux. One of the places I worked at just used cross assembling. You wrote the code for whatever and compiled it for the target and bingo.

Jobs had the idea that people should be removed from needing to know how to program. How many abstraction layers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer? 10. No wait now its 11. Oops just changed to 12. Uck!
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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Hi Moose On The Loose .. Hi James186282

#42 Post by mister_electronico »

Hi Moose On The Loose .. Hi James186282


Currently working with Kicad without any problem, and work with many great programs in Puppy frugal mode with only 512Mb of Pupsave without problems.

The solution is to remove programs from Pupsave file and place on the hard disk.

In many cases creating symbolic links to folders where I put the programs on the hard disk.

So I run programs like Kicad, MplabX, Picsimlab, Gpsim, Sdcc, Gputil, Geda .......

Like I did in:


http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 841#766841

Hope help you.



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#43 Post by Moose On The Loose »

James186282 wrote: Babbling insane rant alarm....
I should stop moaning and groaning because I've seen some folks (not enough) interested in making small compact and understandable code that compiles without the mountain of work. It might be me but there seems like a lack of comments in the source almost always goes along with the crazy huge pain in the arse it is to get things to compile correctly.
I have noticed other patterns that can serve as a guide:

If the writer of a program refuses to write a man page for the program the odds are the program is not very good. Refusal to write a man page seems to go along with a primadonna mind set.

Any software that includes the term "project" in its description of what you are going to do with it is likely not very good. It seems that when a writer of a program doesn't have a clear idea of what the program is going to do, they use the word "project" and the lack of knowing what they are writing before they start coding shows up in the performance of the program.

I'm no genius but I've written a CAM system with tens of thousands of lines of source that fit on an 8051 and it compiled in seconds (not minutes) and I never needed a Make file or worse an IDE.
I too have written a whole lot of 8051 code. This includes a project where the compiled result is well over 100K even with the text contents being compressed.
IDE (Integrated Development Excrement) Wow do I hate IDEs. Who has time for this?
The last IDE that I saw that was worth bothering with was Borlands IDE for Pascal or C programming in MessDos. Borland kept it simple and it worked well. Today with multiple windows written right into the OS, there is no longer any excuse for making an IDE. A good editor, a reliable compiler and a good debugger are really all that are needed. I can open an window for each so there is no need for some program to do it for me.

It ends up being much more work to learn how to set this up and operate it then it does to write the code. The integrated editor is almost always nothing like the editor I use (Understand and have all the sharp edges sanded off)
TI's "code composer" is a classic example of the dreadful thing you are talking about plus it is the example for the "project" problem. They even went so far as to make a thing called a "project" and a thing called a "workspace". Working together these make it so that the only program you can easily write is the "hello world" example used in the documentation. Try to have more than one person working on the project and matters get even worse.
And these "optimized" code claims. I thought the whole idea of C was that the source is supposed to be able to go from on type of CPU to another but I keep seeing things like ARM version of Linux. One of the places I worked at just used cross assembling. You wrote the code for whatever and compiled it for the target and bingo.
Portability of C code is largely a myth. POSIX makes things easier but still you have the problem that the sizes of variables are not fixed nor is the endedness. Getting code written to play wave files that was written for 32 bit to compile and run correctly on 64 bits is read trouble,
Jobs had the idea that people should be removed from needing to know how to program. How many abstraction layers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer? 10. No wait now its 11. Oops just changed to 12. Uck!
Computer users should not have to know how to program. This is all part of the idea that software should do what is expected. In Kicad, if you put a resistor into the schematic, it should stay as a resistor and not suddenly mutate into an inductor. I have often been forced to work with software that does things like that.

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Re: Hi Moose On The Loose .. Hi James186282

#44 Post by Moose On The Loose »

mister_electronico wrote:Hi Moose On The Loose .. Hi James186282

[...]
The solution is to remove programs from Pupsave file and place on the hard disk.

In many cases creating symbolic links to folders where I put the programs on the hard disk.
[...]
I do this often when running as frugal too. I have put entire directories on a memory stick or local hard drive. Another option is to compress the added directories into an SFS, mount the SFS and then point the link into the mounted SFS. I do this to carry things like videos and pictures too.

You can also make the path and library path include the mounted file system so that things that are searched for are found without making links for each.

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#45 Post by James186282 »

Moose On The Loose wrote: I have noticed other patterns that can serve as a guide:

If the writer of a program refuses to write a man page for the program the odds are the program is not very good. Refusal to write a man page seems to go along with a primadonna mind set.

Any software that includes the term "project" in its description of what you are going to do with it is likely not very good. It seems that when a writer of a program doesn't have a clear idea of what the program is going to do, they use the word "project" and the lack of knowing what they are writing before they start coding shows up in the performance of the program.
What a pleasure its been to read your post. I was really starting to think I had gone (more) nuts. I know I'm getting older and crabbier but... Gosh O mighty your totally spot on. Comments in source code are another hint that your about to get something great or something thats more trouble then its worth. I worked with a chap who wrote a comment remover so he could check off the "Must Supply Source" part of a contract he was working on. At the time I thought this was the worst thing I had ever heard of until I saw some code this fellow wrote WITH comments. It was almost unbearable to read it. This I was sure was the worst but I was wrong. I was scanning around the internet and found this wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obfuscated_code
OH MY GOD. They need a contest and programs to automate making crap code crapier? Someone please just kill me and get it over with.


I too have written a whole lot of 8051 code. This includes a project where the compiled result is well over 100K even with the text contents being compressed.
I would have to look but when I was doing the CAM system I think I had to use a Phillips part that was limited to no more then 64K and I think it was something slightly more then 32K. One more address line and a larger part.

This made me curious. I have a rough idea of how large the CAM system was that I wrote but I wondered about how large the source was versus the machine code. The idea being that large source versus compiled code is of interest. I'm not saying that all comments are useful. Its certainly possible to have a huge amount of junk comments versus the compiled output but I think its very likely that a close source to compiled result would be an obvious indication of high crapworthyness.

A quick peek at some old source indicates roughly 10:1 source to executable. Of course this is probably not a good measurement. I've seen 6 line "hello world" programs where the source to executable is the other way round like 1:100 using the "highly optimized" compiler.

Anyway - thanks for the comment on these IDEs. I had been thinking that maybe I'm just too fussy to do this kind of work again or that there is no way to do it in a way thats to my liking. The old tools (and I) still work.

Ahh turbo Pascal and C? I was at a Comdex where (Was it something Phillip or something Khan?) got up and started playing saxaphone. That was memorable. Based on what one of my coworkers said his C and Pascal compilers were quite good. The thing my chum said that I remembered was that Turbo meant you weren't standing around waiting forever. My own experience was with a compiler called A86 (Later A386) which was Faster then anything else that I could find. And if you knew the Intel Syntax you could just code. There were no picky weirdnesses (Or very few) that you had to enter to make the compiler happy. I think the author co wrote the first 8086 assembler? Eric Issacson. An interesting guy with some serious programming chops.
TI's "code composer" is a classic example of the dreadful thing you are talking about plus it is the example for the "project" problem. They even went so far as to make a thing called a "project" and a thing called a "workspace". Working together these make it so that the only program you can easily write is the "hello world" example used in the documentation. Try to have more than one person working on the project and matters get even worse.
Computer users should not have to know how to program. This is all part of the idea that software should do what is expected. In Kicad, if you put a resistor into the schematic, it should stay as a resistor and not suddenly mutate into an inductor. I have often been forced to work with software that does things like that.
This was badly worded on my part. I saw an old Video or Mr Jobs talking about children he had met who were using Apple IIs. He joked that they knew more about the Apple computer then he did. The gist of it was that he felt computers ought to be more like a blender. No instruction manual. No need to know anything but to pitch some foods into the blender and hit buttons until you had a smoothy. (A gray meat based smoothy - uck)

I managed some guys who wrote some pretty good code but did it using two or maybe up to 4 fingers. I seem to remember it was unusual for males to know how to type because I got a few weird looks when I was learning that skill. I can't say learning how to type was easy but it has been a skill that makes things go along faster. Anyway I remember how Mr Jobs was so intense about the mouse and how no one needed to press a keyboard button (or type anything) for the computer to save a file or print etc. Type, move hand on mouse, wiggle click, move hand to keyboard type and repeat.

One of the places I worked at had a pretty large keyboard that included keys like [IN] [OUT] [PRINT] [UP] [DOWN] everything but "Oops" that was considered an insult to the customers. Somewhere I have some keycaps that I had engraved that say SHIT! *As in you did something you wanted to UNDO which was what the company decided on. I'm clearly babbling and ranting again but the joke I had about the goal of mice based computing was that in the future they would go beyond typing letters and such. No keyboard at all! Lets say you wanted to write a form letter. First you wiggle the mouse and click the icon of an English knight. Then you clicked an icon of an antler topped animal. Your first line of text is complete and you never had to type anything!!! Brain free word processing.

Dear (deer icon) Sir (the English Knight SIR Icon)

Oh wait I did that in reverse order. I must be thinking Intel instead of Motorola or Z8000.

Almost like Cut and Past coding.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

bh56
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KiCad pet

#46 Post by bh56 »

Hi,
I use kicad to make simple pcbs at the school I work at. Could you detail how you compiled kicad? The later versions have a push and shove router I'm interested in. At present I'm using Slacko 5.9.3
Thanks
Brendan

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