When starting out with EAGLE it’s easy to overlook the attribute tool. However, this is crucial when putting together a professional release package and ensuring proper documentation. Attributed paramaters show as collumns and information on a BOM export. Properly adding this information to the component allows for hands-off BOM generation when it comes time to […]
Category: Tools
Altium Designer Shortcuts
After using ExpressPCB, EAGLE, Mentor PADs, and OrCAD I’ve found Altium to be above and beyond in usability and horsepower. Below are some useful keyboard shortcuts to get you up and running quickly. PCB Shortcuts Keys Description J L Jump to location Q Switch between metric and imperial units Ctrl + M Measure distance between […]
C# Example – Hash Checker
In part of an effort to push documentation, traceability, and verification to the production and engineering workflows I created a simple WPF calculator and comparator for MD5 and SHA1 cryptographic hashes. The program currently supports MD5 and SHA1 hashes. Running the software Download the repository from the GitHub link below. Run the EXE file located […]
Eagle Tip: Exporting Pick and Place Data
When submitting a design to a fab to get your electronics assembled, you’ll need to generate the “XY Data” file that can then be imported into the board houses’ software to program their Pick-and-Place machine. The default-installed ULP below will generate the data file in a format that matches Altium Designer and will be useable […]
Mentor PADS: Designer Layout Modeless Commands
Mentor PADs features a variety of “modeless” commands that all you to change settings on the fly using quick keystrokes instead of poking around through the GUI menus. This post describes some of the available commands using the Layout package. To activate the commands you simply start typing when the software has focus. After the […]
Markdown: Cheat sheet
Markdown was designed as a lightweight markup language that could be quickly converted to other formats (such as HTML). The advantage is that it’s simpler and quicker to get basic information formatted and shared. Below I’ve compiled a short cheat sheet. Headers # H1 ## H2 ##### H5 Horizontal Rule Three or more hyphens, asterisks, […]
Adding Visual Studio Code to Your Context Menu
I’m a huge fan of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code but the one thing that I found was missing when switching from Sublime Text is the inability to open any file with it by using the context menu. Adding this functionality can be done with a simply registry tweak. Open the registry by pressing [WIN]+[R} and […]
Getting Xilinx ISE to Work on Windows 10
Unfortunately, Xilinx ISE does not officially support Windows 8 or newer and likely will not due to the shift from ISE to Vivado. Fortunately enough, there’s an easy fix to keep you up and running. The below steps were performed on Windows 10 x64. Open the following directory: C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\ISE\lib\nt64 Find and rename libPortability.dll to libPortability.dll.bak […]
SnapEDA: Electronics CAD Hub
SnapEDA is changing the way engineers design electronics. Built on powerful algorithms, SnapEDA’s computer-aided design (CAD) building blocks, including PCB footprints and schematic symbols, can be downloaded instantly to an engineer’s CAD software of choice using powerful conversion technology, dramatically improving productivity and accelerating innovation. Our patent-pending Diagnostic Checker for CAD models provides engineers with […]
Tools: OnShape – Cloud Based 3D CAD
I’ve had the need for an inexpensive 3D CAD tool to design basic enclosures and to better convey ideas in a common format. OnShape definitely foots the bill. It’s a very robust tool that’s capable of integrating with existing CAD tools such as Solidworks and AutoCAD. That way I can take an existing design and […]