PCB designing using circuit maker

 CIRCUIT MAKER

INTRODUCTION

PCB is a acronym of Printed Circuit Board that helps in connecting the electronics components with pads, tracks and lines incorporated on a laminated copper sheet.In order to get rid of end to end wiring and make the circuit design hassle free, first PCB was developed by Australian Engineer Paul Eisler.PCB designing is very useful for both electronics engineers and for  hobbyist. PCB designing is very long process it can take more then  2 days,because choosing or finding  components is very long process . PCBs come in different layers and multiple designs. PCBs used in simple electronics are composed of single layer  Most compact and advanced hardware like graphics card and motherboard are composed of multi layers PCBs.

Why CIRCUIT MAKER 

There are many pcb designing software for example :

•  Eagle 
•  KI-cad
•  altium 
•  proteus 
• and many more 

Above mentioned software's are paid software expect Ki-cad but ki-cad interference is not that much impressive.

But circuit maker is free to use software with huge community and linked with huge  electronics supplier octopart ,which make PCB designing easy,Circuit maker is also connected to cloud so all design will stay with software which make Circuit maker more  portable 

HOW TO USE CIRCUIT MAKER

• Visit https://circuitmaker.com and download the software by creating new id 
• after that install the circuit maker on the computer 
• open the circuit maker 
• Then go to my project and add new project
• now name your project and there you will see two options  

1. public 
2. sandbox

• public as name suggest it will make design public and sandbox means private 
• now name your project and save that and then open that project by clicking on it 

• now right click on the for blog(name of your file )
• then add new project and pcb add both of them and name them if you want otherwise just click on ok 
• now you will see both pcb and sheet opened 
• now add components by clicking c 
• now click on choose and then make sure you set libraries to octopart 
• now any component can be added for better searching use digikey.com and find components there and believe me its the hardest part in the pcb designing which circuit maker made easy, because many components are already added to the circuit maker only worry about the footprint and the symbol 
• here i will design the simple 555  astable mutivibrator which just flash the led

 

 

• Now toughest part choosing components so first decide what components you need smd or through hole , for simplicity i go with through hole and choose what resistor you want so i want 1/8 watt resistors and capacitor value of 10uf  remember if you some how not able to find your desired component just replace that with any for example i want 10k resistor but i am not able to find its footprint (which is important ) ,but 100k one is available so what i will do is simple wasting my time in making footprints i just use 100k  because there size and lead spacing are same 
  
  
    
• i  found this on digikey (296-NE555P-ND )and luckily it has 3d footprint some components dont have 3d footprints (because nobody made that ) to move or rotate it hold ctrl+shift+rightmouse and then move mouse to rotate the 3d footprint down yellow one is 2d print which is real footprint 
• To show that you can replace any resistance here i have example found on digi key so first image is of 100 ohm resistance and second one is 10k resistance 

                                                                      100 ohm resistance see size and dimension 

                                                        

                                                                 10k ohm resistance see its size and dimension 

• so its proved that i can use any component but always take look at spacing while choosing components  

• our circuit is completed and you can see the red lines and question-mark sign in front of components and thats because they are not named properly and to name them there is two way first is by clicking on every components and naming them second is easy and very useful for big circuits for that go to tools >Annotate >annotate quietly  
• now ctrl+S to save and go to project and then click on commit project
• now open pcb there only pcb is available but not component  for that go to project and click on import project and then click on validate changes and then execute changes now you will see all components are available there
• now make board small by going to board shape>edit board shape 
• now place components click 3 on computer keyboard 

• now we make pour which means every single ground will get connected 
• down there you can switch from boards too see the layers its 2 layer  board so it only contains top and bottom layer
• now click  2 on your keyboard now go to polygen pour

• this menu will popup now connect to net means which net wanted to be pour its very samll board so this contains few nets and select ground and layer means which layer you want so first we do  for the top and then for bottom 
• select all the parameters and then click ok 

• now click on edges to make pour 

• this is how it look after doing pour on both edges now same for bottom layer 
• after completing this steps zoom in and see the changes the ground pins are now connected together 

• this how ground will look like now click on r to route because this is very small circuit we can use auto router go to tools click on auto route>all
• after auto routing this is how it gonna look like 

• this is the 3D look of pcb 

Conclusion 

this was just the overview of the circuit maker there are so many thing i cant explain in this small projects like ports, netlabel  routing methods, via's ,routing size and many more.but by this blog anyone who is interested in designing pcb can start their journey and explore things by them self or with the help of  circuit maker community 

components list i used in this project from digikey 

1. UVR1V100MDD (capacitor  

   )
2. PPTC031LFBN-RC ( female header)
3. CF18JT10K0 (Resistor)
4. 296-NE555P-ND (555 ic)