First thing I do when I jump into laying out the PCB is move the stuff around to rough approximations of where I expect them to end up – connectors around the periphery, power components near power input, decouplers near the ICs they’re decoupling, clocking components near MCUs, etc. After that it’s just a game of moving and rotating until parts feel like they’re as grouped and as close to each other as practical and none of the rats-nest wires are twisted in satanic ways (unless, of course, you deliberately want to draw pentacles on your PCBs).
If you use hierarchy in your schematics, you can use the duplicate layout plugin and it makes things super easy. Also if you have two monitors or split screen, you can click on a schematic component and it will select it in PCBNew and vice versa
Have the schematic and pcb side by side. When you click on a component in the schematic it will automatically jump to that conponent in the pcb and already highlight it. From there just press m to move it and you are good to go.
I wish it would lay out the components for each sheet in a similar way to schematic layout for that sheet.
Sure, that’s nothing like how I’ll actually want the final layout, but it’ll make finding parts so much easier than playing the “which 0402 is this?” game 100x over.
Ctrl-F let’s you search by RefDes. It will even automatically select the part so that you can type the designator, hit enter, press ‘M’, and move the mouse a tiny amount to bring the part straight to wherever the cursor happens to be.
it looks like a spider got loose on the plans
First thing I do when I jump into laying out the PCB is move the stuff around to rough approximations of where I expect them to end up – connectors around the periphery, power components near power input, decouplers near the ICs they’re decoupling, clocking components near MCUs, etc. After that it’s just a game of moving and rotating until parts feel like they’re as grouped and as close to each other as practical and none of the rats-nest wires are twisted in satanic ways (unless, of course, you deliberately want to draw pentacles on your PCBs).
If you use hierarchy in your schematics, you can use the duplicate layout plugin and it makes things super easy.
Also if you have two monitors or split screen, you can click on a schematic component and it will select it in PCBNew and vice versa
I wish there was a way to place components in their location on the schematic. That way everything is logical to start with.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/untangle.html
First step is to set the grid.
Have the schematic and pcb side by side. When you click on a component in the schematic it will automatically jump to that conponent in the pcb and already highlight it. From there just press m to move it and you are good to go.
Auto place auto route boom easy.
I use T shortcut a lot at this stage. t r1, place it at that corner, t u6, place it over there, etc. Much faster than hunting for them with mouse.
Why don’t you turn off seeing these net connections. That’s what I do while I figure oy my component placements initially
Route as you go, always move back and forth from PCB to schematic as you add parts. Also hierarchical data sheets when it makes sense.
***NEVER TRUST THE AUTOROUTER***
I wish it would lay out the components for each sheet in a similar way to schematic layout for that sheet.
Sure, that’s nothing like how I’ll actually want the final layout, but it’ll make finding parts so much easier than playing the “which 0402 is this?” game 100x over.
Ctrl-F let’s you search by RefDes. It will even automatically select the part so that you can type the designator, hit enter, press ‘M’, and move the mouse a tiny amount to bring the part straight to wherever the cursor happens to be.
Maybe a dumb question since I’m new at this but why don’t you use auto route?