Program for layout of parts on perfboard

[Jim S]

I am building some interface circuitry on an Arduino shield protoboard which is basically connectors around the edges and perfboard in the middle.  Rather than do a pencil drawing I thought I would try a program so I could easily move things around to get a good layout.  Ran across this site that explains how they used Inkscape for the job.  He uses it for stripboard but the same ideas work for perfboard (grid of holes but without the conductive strips connecting holes).

http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/ronj/ink.html

Wondering what other people use for this...

[Chris Weiss]

for simple things Fritzing is the easiest to learn.  it has a good library of parts, and can also generate a schematic and PCB from your breadboard or perfboard drawings.  just don't bother using its autorouter, you'll spends more time cleaning up after it than just placing the lines yourself.

[Jim S]

I need to give Fritzing a look.  I am putting parts on a SeedStudio Protoshield for an Arduino and was able to load a view of the board into Inkscape and just add parts to the breadboard area.  Didn't have to draw out the existing board.  Do you know if Fritzing can do that?  From what I have read (which isn't a lot) to put something custom like the protoshield into Fritzing I would have to draw it in Inkscape or something similar first (unless someone has already made a part for it in Fritzing).

[Chris Weiss]

sparkfun's protoshield seems to be included in mine (though I may have added SFE's parts pack).  it's probably close enough.

[Jim S]

Quite a bit different.  The SeedStudio board has some weird issues but I got some cheap when they were sold by Radio Shack.  No idea why you would need another USB connector, for example.  They brought a lot of connectors up to the proto board which eats up a lot of space.  And they relied on ground connections through the various connectors so if you don't put some of the connectors on then some of the points labeled as ground aren't connected - that really confused me for a bit.

http://wiki.seeed.cc/Protoshield_Kit_for_Arduino/

I've got it mostly done in Inkscape so I am not going to go to a bunch of extra trouble to redo it in Fritzing.  I will look at Fritzing for other projects.

[EschewObfuscation]

You might try this one:

https://github.com/bancika/diy-layout-creator