Regarding the 45 degree tracks, I was not referring to setting the angle - I did not know you could do that.
This is quite handy, you can also make curved tracks like I did here with my Skylark61 project.
Edit: it's a small guitar amp with chassis-mounted tubes.
What I meant was the cursor you get on the screen when manually routing. It is a big cross with a vertical and a horizontal arm. The EDA I use at the moment has a similar cursor when routing but is also has armes at 45 degrees so o it is much easier to see where to change direction to hit a pin. I was wondering if it is possible to change this cursor.
Ahh, okay. I think this is not possible in EasyEDA. I have not yet seen a way to change the cursor.
Regarding the coupling of the schematic to the PCB, the way I work at the moment it to draw the schematic on paper and then layout the PCB. Back annotation takes place in my head!
That's exactly my approach.
I was hoping a modern EDA would make it easier for me to create a good looking schematic and then transfer it directly to a PCB layout program.
That's how it's meant to be and somehow it works. But, and this is a big but, things get very time consuming because of the way the schematic, the connection nets, footprints and 3D models interact with each other if you want to change something afterwards.
This is where EasyEDA (and other EDA programs) has real problems. The smallest changes made during design work cause a lot of headaches, at least for me. In the 3D world and especially in game design, complex assets and their interconnections are solved much better and more intuitively.
That's why I stick to my old way of working, because the effort is so much less and the process is really much faster. I'm aware that this is a bit of a Stone Age approach, but after a lot of consideration, it has worked for me to this day, which is certainly due to the manageable complexity of my projects.
The huge problem I have with every other EDA I have tried is that the component libraries are incredibly cumbersome. They all contain a million alternatives for each component, most of them SMT which I don't need.
Yes, I understand that very well. That's why, after some trial and error, I decided to use EasyEDA, because I was able to build up my own library of components, footprints and their 3D models very quickly.
Your way will be similar, you will use a very manageable number of conventional (old school) components. A few tube sockets, resistors, radial and axial capacitors, diodes and a few connection terminals, that's it.
This can be found (and adapted) within a few hours and saved in an extra folder or, like me, in a standard project in which all these components are located as a "starter environment". This allows you to see exactly what you are looking for and what you want to use, no cryptic library names that are lost in a thousand similar names. I then simply copy and paste what I need from this window into the current project window. EasyEDA is here very straightforward and fast, which is why I use it. Most of the time I don't even have to open the built-in component library, because I've already used almost everything I need and its waiting in my "starter environment". These components have all been tested and proven to work, no more headaches.
Which reminds me, is there a way in EasyEDA to turn off all the SMT components in the libraries?
Not that I'm aware of.
