Examples of artistically hand drawn circuitry?

tigpha

19 Oct 2015, 21:09

Hi Deskthoritans,

May I request some more links to images of hand-drawn circuit boards, like the images HaaTa linked to, please? One example in particular struck me as being, well, beautiful!

Maybe I'm a bit peculiar, but examples from 1980 onward are far less visually appealing, all angular, no groovy flow, no "organic" feel. Am I the only one who feels that something was lost when computers became capable of more efficiently connecting components than people are?

What prevents us XXI century software engineers from writing modern PCB tracing tools that bring back the '70s "feel" in circuitry? Are there examples of XXI century circuits that are beautiful to behold?
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mr_a500

19 Oct 2015, 22:09

I thought there was already a thread like this here, but I can't find it. Here are some of my photos:
(not sure if they're all hand drawn or not)

Image

Image
Victor 9000 Keytronic PCB.JPG
Image

andrewjoy

19 Oct 2015, 23:03

So cool , but i did not know we allowed porn on this board :P

pcaro

19 Oct 2015, 23:32

andrewjoy wrote:So cool , but i did not know we allowed porn on this board :P
Porn yes. But only the best! Transparents cases for this curves please...

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webwit
Wild Duck

19 Oct 2015, 23:38


tigpha

20 Oct 2015, 21:23

Merçi monsiuer mr_a500, et monsieur webwit,

The George Risk is very striking, with the deep cobalt blue background and silver Greek meander motif. It has an optical art style that seems fitting for the 1970's. I have seen the blue substrate on some Burroughs plug-in circuit boards too, on eBay, from the same era.

The Keytronic has traces seemingly leading nowhere. They don't appear to be sufficiently broad enough to have any capacitive effect, or some other electronic voodoo. They do make me think of Flamenco dancers... My imagination is getting the better of me.

Thanks, I'm gaining some inspiration for circuit designs from these. Now, where would I find boards coloured in bright colours, like the cobalt blue George Risk?

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snuci
Vintage computer guy

21 Nov 2015, 17:16

Tigpha,

I posted a KIM-1 pic from the Internet in my Apple Lisa keyboard thread. Here is a link to my blue PCB KIM-1 both front and back. It's not a keyboard but it is nice to look at just the same :)

http://vintagecomputer.ca/mos-commodore-kim-1/

tigpha

21 Nov 2015, 20:39

Thanks for the photos, snuci.

I'm digging about to find the necessary tools and materials to etch PCBs. I have made my own way back in 1980-something, laboriously using pad transfers and 1mm tape directly on copper, but nothing since then. The post by masaleiro about the HacKeyboard is an inspiration.

HuBandiT

22 Nov 2015, 04:31

tigpha wrote: What prevents us XXI century software engineers from writing modern PCB tracing tools that bring back the '70s "feel" in circuitry? Are there examples of XXI century circuits that are beautiful to behold?
One particular obstacle is the Gerber format, which only allows drawing straight segments and circular arcs for traces.

Another is that not many software packages are doing routing very smartly: barely any (for PCBs) do topological routing.

gEDA had something started by a uni student several years ago, and later was some hope around getting that into KiCad, but the original guy's interest stopped and the main KiCad developer expressed their doubts regarding the usefulness of auto-routers in general. Then some guys in CERN added a octagonal (45 degree geometry based) push&shove router (with semi-automatic trace length matching), which is practical enough for most usage scenarios (a PCIe card is the youtube demo) to make manual routing a quite acceptably fast process.

And all of this maps cleanly and efficiently to current Gerber.

With this in place already, and it clashing conceptually with a free-angle (let alone curved like, as you desire) infrastructure, the bar is even higher.

Yet there are still some things missing. Like teardrops, or arc-based trace turns to further improve high-frequency characteristics. And it would be nice to have smoothly changing trace widths sometimes (to squeeze through tight spaces in a punch), not to mention curvature continuous traces for aesthetical beauty.

There are one or two proofs of concept implemented by hobbyists around the web (neither integrated into any packages yet). Look up "rubber band routing" for the 1997 paper that most such projects are based on.

There is also LiquidPCB, that continuously optimizes all sections of all traces and maybe even component positions (think surface tension) using your otherwise ide GPU power, and results in organic-looking traces. Not sure how ready to use it is though.

Any interest on working something like this?

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stratokaster

22 Nov 2015, 07:43

tigpha wrote: Thanks for the photos, snuci.

I'm digging about to find the necessary tools and materials to etch PCBs. I have made my own way back in 1980-something, laboriously using pad transfers and 1mm tape directly on copper, but nothing since then. The post by masaleiro about the HacKeyboard is an inspiration.
Basically, the only tool you need is a laser printer: http://m.instructables.com/id/PCB-etchi ... r-printer/

tigpha

22 Nov 2015, 18:05

stratokaster wrote: Basically, the only tool you need is a laser printer: http://m.instructables.com/id/PCB-etchi ... r-printer/
... And blank boards, etchant, tanks, acetone, software (I suppose Inkscape will do), suitable paper, a clothes iron (mine broke just yesterday!), time, space and energy. Maybe some manual dexterity too...

Perhaps a tiny bit more than just a laser printer. Although I do happen to have one, and also a Dremel and a range of tiny carbide drills, so I'm on the right path :-)

In principle, yes, I agree that the tools and materials are much easier to obtain, and there's plenty of good advice and detailed examples all over the internet. That much has greatly improved since the 1980's, when most of my hacking knowledge was learnt from monthly magazines such as Électronique Practique:
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Wow. I remember that issue! That takes me wa-a-ay back!

tigpha

22 Nov 2015, 19:07

HuBandiT wrote: One particular obstacle is the Gerber format, which only allows drawing straight segments and circular arcs for traces. Another is that not many software packages are doing routing very smartly: barely any (for PCBs) do topological routing.
... ... ...
Any interest on working something like this?
Hi HuBandiT, I searched for references to automated PCB routing, and my impression is that people far more clever than I have struggled very hard trying to make the machine as good as professional designers. LiquidPCB looks interesting, if only somewhat complete, and perhaps a bit neglected.

Perhaps aesthetics combined with the difficulty of designing effective PCBs is a true craft that may remain only achievable by people of great skill and experience?

mtl

22 Nov 2015, 19:39

HuBandiT wrote: One particular obstacle is the Gerber format, which only allows drawing straight segments and circular arcs for traces.
You can get closer to a hand drawn look if you render the traces in SVG using Bézier curves. Then the SVG can be imported into KiCad as a footprint / module by approximating the curves using polygons, which seems to be supported in Gerber and sufficiently high resolution to look perfectly smooth when fabricated. In another thread I posted a tool (svg2mod.py) to help with that. :)

Edit: Here's an example from a recent prototype run.. The DT and OSH logos are based on SVGs with curves converted to polygons. The same technique could be used for traces.
Spoiler:
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HuBandiT

23 Nov 2015, 01:16

mtl wrote:
HuBandiT wrote: One particular obstacle is the Gerber format, which only allows drawing straight segments and circular arcs for traces.
You can get closer to a hand drawn look if you render the traces in SVG using Bézier curves. Then the SVG can be imported into KiCad as a footprint / module by approximating the curves using polygons, which seems to be supported in Gerber and sufficiently high resolution to look perfectly smooth when fabricated. In another thread I posted a tool (svg2mod.py) to help with that. :)

Edit: Here's an example from a recent prototype run.. The DT and OSH logos are based on SVGs with curves converted to polygons. The same technique could be used for traces.
Spoiler:
image.jpeg
Well:
  • as you said, Béziers aren't natively supported in Gerber (only straight line segments and arcs are), so need to be approximated - ugh; no clean motivation for EDA developers
  • (if you import from SVG, you get aesthetics indeed, but I assume you will no longer have the electrical/DRC functionality during PCB layout?)
  • more importantly however, Gerber explicitly disallows traces to be drawn by polygons. Why exactly, I don't know. My impression is, If you do it, it might still work, but whoever/whatever is interpreting it on the other end, will not have explicit knowledge that what you have drawn by a polygons are intended as traces (though a human will probably recognize - but then they might need to mark them manually) and might not do the right thing.
Last edited by HuBandiT on 23 Nov 2015, 01:28, edited 1 time in total.

HuBandiT

23 Nov 2015, 01:26

tigpha wrote:
HuBandiT wrote: One particular obstacle is the Gerber format, which only allows drawing straight segments and circular arcs for traces. Another is that not many software packages are doing routing very smartly: barely any (for PCBs) do topological routing.
... ... ...
Any interest on working something like this?
Hi HuBandiT, I searched for references to automated PCB routing, and my impression is that people far more clever than I have struggled very hard trying to make the machine as good as professional designers.
Of course it will never get to 100%. But with some reasonable work I think most of the basic/hobbyist (non-RF, non-matched pair) use cases could be made to work - which then would have a place in KiCad; since many people say they aren't really using auto-routers currently (in fact KiCad has a well-developed integration with the - recently retired - FreeRouting.net as it's main auto-router), there is little risk in messing things up for many people. And then once the tedious basics for free angle topological routing are there, it will build momentum, and then building the more advanced features on top of that will become feasible.

I just found an article on the history of PCB auto-routing: http://electronicdesign.com/what-s-diff ... en-and-now
LiquidPCB looks interesting, if only somewhat complete, and perhaps a bit neglected.

Perhaps aesthetics combined with the difficulty of designing effective PCBs is a true craft that may remain only achievable by people of great skill and experience?
I tend to agree, I specifically dislike "shortest-trace" topological autorouters, they create visually/aesthetically too tight, too tense traces. However I just came across an article about an on-IC router recently that strived to distribute/spread out the routes passing through between the same pair of obstacles, and that looked much better (it was also claimed there was an electrical benefit of less cross-talk due to traces not being as tightly spaced and parallel).

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