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VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs  [link]

Posted: 22 Jun 2017, 10:06
by DrAlx
Written by me. It's free and will remain so. I'm calling it a Beta until I receive enough feedback that it is being used OK with no problems.

Links:
Sourceforge main page
Download links (also precompiled versions for Windows and Linux Mint)
Discussions and bug reports
AUR (Arch User Repository) package for Arch Linux users

There is no installer. Just unzip to a folder and run the exe.
I recommend following the in-built tutorial under Help->Tutorial.

The more feedback I get, the quicker it will improve.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 12 Jul 2017, 07:34
by Dirk_Hendrik
As a full time electronics CAD system userI always have a tremendous respect for people choosing to make applications like these. It's a shitload of work. Therefore some remarks;
- What did make you decide to make an application like this? There's quite a few CAD systems available including those targeted at Veroboard
- Whay did make you decide , unless I operated the application wrong, to start off from PCB layouting straight away without going through schematic and netlist phase. This approach kills all portability of a design to a different form as well as all forms of error checking.
- As well, I tend to judge PCB cad systems by 2 initial factors: How are libraries made and how easy is it to edit add components to that library oneself? As far as I see now the possibility to add or edit components is in the hands of the programmer.

In other words, when going further with this project look at how the big boys do it. In structure of the CAD system, and then in functionality.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 12 Jul 2017, 11:20
by DrAlx
Dirk_Hendrik wrote:As a full time electronics CAD system userI always have a tremendous respect for people choosing to make applications like these. It's a shitload of work. Therefore some remarks;
First ,thank you for the feedback. I have had very little.
You say it's a lot of work to make an application like this but the whole thing is only 6500 lines of code. If I rolled the code back to the most basic vero functionality (which is all I used for several years) you could halve that figure. I don't know if you are a programmer or not, but that is very little code and it did not take me that long to write.
Dirk_Hendrik wrote:What did make you decide to make an application like this? There's quite a few CAD systems available including those targeted at Veroboard
I've only ever built on vero and perf and the software was primarily written to help me do that.
I realised that I could easily do a code modification to draw PCB style tracks so I added it.
By including the PCB mode, it means I can post a vero layout to a forum such as this one, but also post an etch-it-yourself style PCB layout (for those who like to do that) with no extra effort. All it takes is a few mouse-clicks.
I have a particular way of building things on vero. I only ever break strips between holes and I always use solder bridges to join adjacent tracks instead of jumpers.
I used to do layouts by hand but it was very tedious and error prone. Most of the time was spent verifying connectivity.
I wanted software that would:
  • Let me easily add & manipulate components without hunting through menus.
    That's why I have a single control panel with practically everything in it.
  • Dynamically check and visualise connectivity while the circuit is manipulated.
  • Have the program tell me where to make breaks in the vero strips.
  • Have the program tell me where to bridge strips together with solder.
For the sorts of circuits I build, learning a full electronics CAD package (e.g. Eagle, KiCad, etc) and finding a way to use it to produce a vero layout would have been total overkill. They contain way more functionality than I would ever need.
I wanted something that was as easy to use as DIYLC. I like DIYLC and it is a nice drawing program, but what stops it being useful for me is the lack of any connectivity checking or visualisation. There are hundreds of "unverified" DIYLC layouts out there, and I suspect that is largely down to this lack of connectivity checking. If DIYLC had connectivity checking I may have never written my own program.

All the other vero software I have seen starts with a board of strips to which you add components, make breaks, and add jumpers. That would be the way you do things if you have a board physically in front of you and were laying out parts, but to my mind it is not the best way to approach the layout problem algorithmically. Also, not all vero programs had routing or connectivity checking. At least not in the way I wanted it to work. My approach is this...
  • Start with an empty board with no strips.
  • Lay out the components as they appear in the schematic.
  • Graphically specify the netlist by clicking on the component pins.
  • Manipulate the components to minimise area (using the auto-routing to make connections).
  • Finally, switch on "Vero" mode in the software and let it tell me where to make the strip breaks and solder bridges.
Dirk_Hendrik wrote:- Whay did make you decide , unless I operated the application wrong, to start off from PCB layouting straight away without going through schematic and netlist phase. This approach kills all portability of a design to a different form as well as all forms of error checking.
I don't know if you ran through the in-built tutorials ? (Help->Tutorials)
There is a netlist in the tool. You can't do auto-routing or connectivity checking without it. Having this sort of error checking was the reason I wrote the software in the first place.
You can import/export the netlist but it is my own text format. I could add import from some other format like LTspice but it's not a priority at the moment. I reckon anyone whose using something like LTspice would probably be using a full EDA package to produce boards anyway.

The way you specify the netlist in the program is graphically at the beginning of the layout.
There is an example in the tutorials of a simple NPN amplifier.
The idea is that you do not go straight to the final layout. Instead you start by placing the parts just as they appear in the schematic.
Think of this as the "schematic drawing stage". Apart from ICs, there is not that much difference between drawing a schematic symbol and drawing a component outline.
Once you have the parts laid out as in the schematic, you specify the netlist graphically by "painting" netlist values to the component pins using mouse clicks. That is the "netlist specification stage".
So long as you specify the netlist correctly, you can then manipulate the parts however you want and the program will prevent you from making short-circuits and will warn you about open-circuits.
Dirk_Hendrik wrote:As well, I tend to judge PCB cad systems by 2 initial factors: How are libraries made and how easy is it to edit add components to that library oneself? As far as I see now the possibility to add or edit components is in the hands of the programmer.
In other words, when going further with this project look at how the big boys do it. In structure of the CAD system, and then in functionality.
I tried to cover the majority of parts that you would have on a vero build. It would not be difficult to add a footprint editor and it's on my to-do list.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 16 Jul 2017, 16:02
by lcv
Hi DrAlx
Thanks for sharing this SW.
I did spend some time experimenting some of its features ( I went through the tutorial [btw your NPN example won't bias correctly] , put together some components etc.)
Now,apart from the SW itself , I have a fundamental issue on how the tracks, after auto-routing, are mapped to veroboards , i.e. through cuts between the holes and solder bridges between adjacent strips:
1) I have difficulties obtaining clean, repeatable cuts between holes on a strip. Cutting at the holes is much cleaner.
2) Solder joints: I tried, but they just don't happen, and surely they are not elliptical :-) . Solder spreads around (as it should) and then by adhesion it regroups on the metal (as it should). To me solder bridges barely works across two perf pads. Low temperature solder shaping is not a reliable practice IMHO.

Given that nothing is done algorithmically to reduce the number of cuts or bridges, I think that my vero for a not-trivial circuit will look a real mess underneath.
On the other hand, mapping in this way the tracks on the vero, it really improves on the control you can have on the vero tracks path , e.g. grounds tracks etc.
But simply , using veros the way you suggest is above my current ability.
Probably I am missing something...
Thanks again,
Best Regards,
Lvc

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 17 Jul 2017, 10:51
by DrAlx
lcv wrote:Hi DrAlx
1) I have difficulties obtaining clean, repeatable cuts between holes on a strip. Cutting at the holes is much cleaner.
2) Solder joints: I tried, but they just don't happen, and surely they are not elliptical :-) . Solder spreads around (as it should) and then by adhesion it regroups on the metal (as it should). To me solder bridges barely works across two perf pads. Low temperature solder shaping is not a reliable practice IMHO.
Thanks for the feedback Lvc. I fixed the nonsense NPN example in the latest version.

Yes, the software is geared towards my own style of building on vero and it won't be for everyone. I use that style because it leads to more compact builds.
If you want to avoid strip breaks and cut out a hole instead (i.e. a whole grid square) then you will have to manually erase the grid square to do that.
In fact when I first wrote the software, I did not have any sort of auto-routing and just painted in the strips manually.
The software still does the most important thing which is to check connectivity.

My own technique for strip cutting / bridging is this.
  • I make all strip cuts before any of the parts are put in the board.
    The first thing I do is mark all the break points with a black sharpie marker and double check against the layout.
    To cut a strip, I make 2 close parallel cuts with a sharp knife (what we call a Stanley knife in the UK) and then remove the inked portion between the two cuts.
    I also manually edit the locations of the strip breaks in the software to try and make the cuts line up so that I can cut several strips in one go.
    Once I have done the whole board, I check it for shorts using a multi-meter.
  • Bridging strips with just solder is not easy (as you mention) and wastes a lot of solder too. So I don't do that. What I actually do is bend the component legs (after they have gone through the hole but before they are soldered) and use them to make a bridge to the neighboring strip. So long as you keep the legs short and bridge just one strip instead of several, then desoldering in future is not a problem.
    The software already favors putting bridges in places where there are component pins for this very reason.
    The software also tries to avoid doing that in places where there is only a pad for off-board wiring. The reason being that you don't want the act of adding/removing an off-board wire to de-solder a connection between strips.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 17 Jul 2017, 13:37
by DrAlx
Here is an example of a board I built a few years ago.
This one was actually a messy build, but amazingly worked first time with no errors after soldering.

Sharpie marks: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AvrH61utWEtEh1hcRXPEcCanY11o
After cutting strip breaks: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AvrH61utWEtEh1eJQgOkBu8QwM6N

After I make the parallel cuts, I remove the copper by pushing a jewellers screwdriver along the break to make sure there is no material left.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 12 Feb 2018, 10:44
by DrAlx
I have now released version 1.10 and dropped the Beta label.

Available here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/

You can now import the parts and netlist from a schematic produced in TinyCAD (a free schematic editor, also available on SourceForge).
You can still avoid using a schematic and specify the netlist graphically if you wish.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 21 Feb 2018, 11:32
by DrAlx
Version 1.17 is now available for download.

Someone asked for visible pin-numbers on ICs, so I added that as a display option since it makes
it easier to work with ICs with lots of pins.

You can now easily produce PCB masks with ground-fill with just a couple of mouse clicks.
The ground-fill automatically updates as you manipulate the tracks.

Example image: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvrH61utWEtEiQGiDOYTqS5GWTTL

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 03 Apr 2018, 11:06
by DrAlx
Version 1.22 is now available for download.

Apart from several usability improvements, it now includes a symbol library
for gEDA so it is now possible to import a netlist from a gEDA schematic.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 07 Apr 2018, 04:39
by Andy2No
It looks good, but can it be used to draw up a schematic? The example pictures on sourceforge don't show any.

I can see this being useful to me, but at the moment I'm looking for a way to draw up a schematic for a simple guitar pedal - I just bought a Caline White Heat, which is definitely not a DOD 250 clone, as some advertisers have claimed. It looks simple enough, so I thought I'd try tracing it.

I could trace it and draw it on paper, making several attempts until it looks reasonable, but I wondered if there was a way to make a schematic directly on the PC, just specifying parts and connections as I find them.

Lots of people have posted nice clear schematics of things they've traced, often as PDFs, but I've never found out what they used. Maybe there are a few different software tools that can do it?

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 07 Apr 2018, 06:51
by DrAlx
Andy2No wrote:It looks good, but can it be used to draw up a schematic? The example pictures on sourceforge don't show any.
You need to do the schematic in other software. Export the circuit as a netlist, and then import that to VeroRoute.
VeroRoute supports 2 free schematic programs...
TinyCAD on windows (also available on Sourceforge), and gEDA on Linux.

For an example of a circuit layout done using TinyCAD and VeroRoute search google for
"18V Electric Mistress with reworked LFO & VCO".

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 07 Apr 2018, 10:14
by Andy2No
Thanks, DrAlx. TinyCAD looks promising. I'll have a look at that soon.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 15 May 2018, 23:49
by DrAlx
Version 1.24 is now available for download.
Due to a couple of requests I've added the ability to edit pin labels.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 27 Jan 2019, 19:10
by DrAlx
V1.27 now released with some minor bug fixes and usability tweaks. Download from main page at

https://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 05 Feb 2019, 10:56
by DrAlx
V1.28 now released. Main improvement is the ability to create your own library of component templates for ICs/transistors, etc. Download from main page at

https://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 25 Feb 2019, 12:22
by DrAlx
V1.30 is now released with more component types (Relays, Switches, Bourns Trimpots) plus
the first of a set of major improvements to usability that are in the pipeline. You can now mark out sub-areas of the grid to select components/wipe tracks.

Download from main page at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 14 Jun 2019, 13:11
by DrAlx
V1.45 is now released. (It's now just under 2 years since the first release)

There have been a number of major improvements since 1.30.

1) Toolbars have been added to the main view.
2) You can add text boxes to the layout.
2) It's possible to easily select and then manipulate (e.g. move and rotate) large portions of a circuit including the track patterns.
3) It's possible to merge circuits from two files into a single design.
4) The software now has an in-built component editor so you can define your own components,
and the footprint/package names are user-defined so they can be used as part of a netlist import in Protel/Tango format.

Download from main page at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 14 Jun 2019, 23:03
by roseblood11
Wow, great project! :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :popcorn:

If you want so improve it further, work on the readability of the layout. The best program in that regard was DIY Layout Creator V1 - it had some flaws but it was quick and simple, too. I never use the newer version - very beautiful and close to perfect, but much more complex and the workflow is slower. Your program looks like the middle path and the ability to check connections saves a lot of time.

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 29 Jul 2019, 10:51
by DrAlx
V1.60 is now released. There have been a lots of improvements since last month's release.
  • The component editor can be used to define "drill holes" as placeable parts (i.e. non-routable grid points).
  • The default "fast" routing algorithm is now 10 times faster than before !!!
  • There is the option to disable "fast" routing and try to produce fewer un-routed nets instead.
  • There are rendering options to show the target board area.
  • Undo/Redo now works in Component Editor mode.
  • Undo/Redo and Zoom buttons have been added to the toolbar.
  • Recent VRT files are listed in the File menu.
  • For quick reference, keyboard and mouse controls are listed in the Key/Mouse Actions dialog under the Help menu
Download from main page at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/

For users of Arch Linux, VeroRoute is now available in the Arch User Repository at
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/veroroute/

Re: VeroRoute - Free layout software for Vero, Perf, & PCBs

Posted: 01 Aug 2019, 17:27
by Axldeziak
Just installed version 1.63 for Linux Mint 18.3.
It would help if the readme had the actual command(s) listed to install the program instead of putting only part of it in the .sh file itself. (How many folks will even know to look there in the first place?)

To install I used this method:
Extracted install folder from the .zip
Open the folder extracted from the .zip in the terminal.
Then run this command to allow the veroroute-install.sh file to be run. Otherwise it will only return "command not found".
sudo chmod +x ./veroroute-install.sh
Then run the install command.
sudo ./veroroute-install.sh
The run icon will now be found in the Development folder under the start menu.

You also left the windows .reg file and readme in the linux install package.