Welcome to the CADSTARguys Blog - Information, hints, tips and my waffle on the CADSTAR Printed Circuit Board design suite.

Please note that all names used are completely fictitious and any thing written is my own personal opinion or knowledge and not related in any way to either my employers or their customers (or Zuken).
Also this is not a replacement for proper Maintenence/support and you should read the help files before asking anything techy:).

Sunday 28 November 2010

Any better?

OK I have had a little play with what default templates are available, hopefully this looks a little better now.

Wish I had some pictures I could use though.

Monday 22 November 2010

OOPS! what have I done...

Oops - I was looking at the templates to try and find one to make the posts wider.

Now it looks awful  -I'll play with the settings some more when I get a chance to see if I can make it better.

Having trouble with components with thermal vias in heatsink pads?

Are you having trouble figuring out how to prevent your components that have a heatsink pad with thermal vias in causing errors when you run a DRC?

The type of package I am talking about is for example the QFP style with a large square middle heatsink pad that also has some vias that go through to copper features on other layers.

Wednesday 17 November 2010

Dangerous Diodes!

Just a little something that I noticed in a CADSTAR library I was browsing through.

How do you draw your diodes? Although there is an obvious choice of whether you want them filled or clear some disastrous mistakes have been made because of bad choices made when creating the simple diode symbol.

Saturday 13 November 2010

Assignments - what are they then?

So what are the "Assignments" in CADSTAR for?

Basically assignments is the term given to they settings for all the route, line, pads, text, copper, via codes amongst others. You assign values to them.

They are all kept within the assignments in CADSTAR, it is worth noting that CADSTAR keeps its assignments in each individual design file, within each schematic and documentation symbol and PCB library also the default files used for new design files.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Who said what?

Hey folks - if your going to post comments could you please leave a name?
Otherwise all posts come from  "Anonymous"  and it gets confusing who is asking what. :)