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:).

Tuesday 3 November 2015

How to Re Order the columns in a parts library Definition.



As a library evolves user attributes are added which can be seen within the parts library on the Definitions tab, however as you add them there is currently no ability to sort the columns within the Library Editor.

I have discovered that there is a way to sort them using a non-formatting text editor such as Notepad.exe.

Monday 5 October 2015

Hiding text, lines and origins - how to control where they appear.

There are some features that are applied to all components however we the user want to be able to control which ones we see and which we do not.
By this I mean, for instance - an attribute such as Value, Package, Voltage etc or perhaps a component outline or a pad and so on.

There are a couple of ways to make it so that we do not see them, the simplest being to disable them in the colours - however this applies to all components and we cannot disable them per component\part by design without a little ingenuity.

Thursday 3 September 2015

My Gerber files do not line up with my drill files?

This is something that I see and get asked about often, eyes light up when I tell them how to fix this.

What happens is that a user will produce Gerber and drill files centered in the bed in the scale & position dialogue and when they are imported into a Gerber viewer i.e. GC-Prevue the drill files are offset from the Gerbers.

This is not really a big problem as they can easily be aligned, but is would be nice if they simply lined up correctly - and they can so how?

Thursday 27 August 2015

I don't think the stats for this blog are very good.

Looking at the stats, I don't really have a large audience, perhaps I need to advertise it more on other sites - perhaps I could do with more people subscribing.

Catch 20 really, if no one looks I wont post, if I don't post no one looks.


Any suggestions?
Many forums etc ban links unless relevant to the discussion, they are not allowed in signatures etc.

So come on watchers - subscribe so I know your watching, I wont spam you.

Are your design files locked after a mishap?

If you have file locking enabled (set in the Options) and for one reason or another you have a power cut or a software crash, CADSTAR cannot delete the temporary lock file that prevents another user having write access to your design, so how do you get access back yourself?

Friday 14 August 2015

Handy hints and tips.

I have been using CADSTAR for 20+ years, I am familiar with most of it however even though I use it daily, show others how to use it and fix problems with it I am amazed that I am still learning all the little things, it is almost as if I learn something new every month. Why is this? Possibly because not every method of doing something is documented - besides, who reads the documentation?

Routing with incremental track widths in P.R.Editor.




When routing within P.R.Editor we route using Necked, Optimal and Typed track widths.

How would you like a variable track width that allows you to increment/decrement the track width while routing between the min & max values of the route code?

Sunday 10 May 2015

Create your components to consistent standards for free.

Why are we still making component footprints by hand, making mistakes with them and getting them wrong when there is no need to?

Time & time again I see component footprints made that are poorly made, non standard, inconsistent and often downright wrong!

Yet there are tools out there that will enable us to make all our component footprints to a consistent standard, following IPC7351 guidelines and best of all the best tool for this is FREE!!