Homemade Hardware

Schematic + Board Commands

These commands can be used on both your schematic and board files

Info

Read and edit the many properties of whatever you click. For example, you can edit the coordinates of a part, or it's rotation, or it's name.

Move

Move a part or connection around. While moving, right-click to rotate the part at 90 degree intervals

Rotate

Click a part to rotate it 90 degrees. You can also change the degree that it will rotate (Board file only!) by changing the Angle parameter in the top-left toolbar

Change

This command can edit any property of what you use it on, it pretty much can do everything. For example, if I wanted to change the width of a route in my board file to 0.016", I would enter "change width 0.016", then click the route I want to change. If I want to change the value of a resistor in schematic file to 220 ohms, I would enter "change value 220" then click that resistor.

If you are not sure of the options availabe to the change command, you can simply enter "change" and a dropdown menu will appear showing all your options.

Text

Simply writes some text, like a comment.

Schematic Commands

Add

Load all libraries, where you can pick a new part to add

Delete

Click a part or a connection to delete

Net

Draw electrical connection between two pins

Copy

Copy a part or connection by clicking it

Name

Give a part or connection a name. Important to remember that any NETs with the same name will be treated as being connected together.

Value

Give a part a value, for example a resistance value "10k"

Label

Display the name of a NET (most useful for "wireless" connections)

Board Commands

Route

Draw the traces that will become phyical copper traces. Turn those thing yellow "unrouted" lines to real traces, either on the Top (red) or Bottom (blue) layer.

Ripup

Remove a trace that was drawn with the "route" command. This does not delete a connection, but only removes the trace you drew for it.

Rats

Re-render the "ground-plane". This command also the added benefit of redrawing all the yellow connection lines to their closes neighbor, which is useful when first organizing your parts

Wire

Draw a line, most often used for drawing the Dimension outline

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