destroying my last pic? driving a miniature motor

[RussMartin]

I guess I forgot to answer that part.
Or maybe I was unconsciously avoiding it, since the program I use is a constant source of mental anguish.

I use IVEX WinDraft/WinBoard.

Ivex went out of business a couple years ago, and now there's no one to fix all the bug's.
Which is probably why they went out of business in the first place. (there's a lot of bug's).

And when the company closed, so did it's online Auto-Router server.
So now everything has to be routed manually. And of course that's hard to do because of the Bug's.

The last board I did, ... 18F6720, 10 other chips, 101 resistors,35 capacitors, etc. took almost 2 months to route manually.

I've got to find another program. And PCB123 just doesn't do it for me.
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I use IVEX WinDraft and WinBoard--and PentaLogix ViewMasterEZ for post-editing the Gerbers. Never much anguish, mental or otherwise. My last upgrade was to 3.12 on WinDraft and 2.26 on WinBoard.

I rarely have problems with WinDraft/WinBoard. Which bugs are "bugging" you? The only chronic, serious difficulty I've encountered is laying in copper zones (such as ground or power planes) with WinBoard, but I started doing that with ViewMasterEZ.

On routing, I don't know what to say--I learned PCB layout before CAD, when it was done on a drafting table!--so I find "manual" routing with WinBoard is a breeze (I never used their auto-routing service). As you've probably already discovered, the first secret of easy routing is starting with the right component layout--and that's more nearly art than science!

But if I can help you (or anyone) out with WinDraft and/or WinBoard problems, let me know. Fundamentally, they are good, powerful products and, since the company is gone, now very accessible.

IVEX was around for over a decade (that's a long time for a small company in a technology field) and did not fail because of a "buggy" product. While in business, they constantly improved and updated their offerings and were even distributed by NTE. They were, I believe, "caught in the middle" between the low end, inexpensive (or free) manufacturer-specific products (PCB123 is an example) and the high end (ORCAD). The founder decided to shut down and move on. I don't agree with how he did it, but I understand the why. And there are still a lot of IVEX users out here.

[Darrel Taylor]

That would be great if you could tell me how to keep it from corrupting the file when it gets big.

Once it goes over about 500 pins or so, things start going haywire. (I have an 850pin license).

I'll be working away and suddenly after moving something, the rats nest goes crazy.
Yellow lines between things that shouldn't even be connected together. When you hit F2 over a trace, it shows it's not assigned to any nets anymore, it's just blank.

If I don't have the rats nest turned on when it happens, it may go unnoticed and get saved that way. Then I'm really cork-screwed. I have to search thru the auto-saved files hoping it hasn't gone too long, or it gets over-written. When that happens I start searching through the dozens of saved files I have, since I have to save after every successful placement, if not I lose hours at a time worth of work.

It's a serious PITA.
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[RussMartin]

See my private message.

[RussMartin]

Well, the first things I would need to know: Are you talking about WinDraft (for schematics) or WinBoard (for board layout)? And which version of either?

Generally speaking, when you start crowding your pin limit (yes, 500 is crowding an 850 limit) with WinBoard, things can sometimes get a little flaky.

One reason I may have fewer problems is that I'm an old guy and have never completely trusted personal computers. So whenever I'm doing something that creates a file, I automatically hit CTRL + S anytime I make a significant change. (I started doing this over 25 years ago, I think with WordStar on a CPM system--it was a Kaypro. It's still a habit.)

Another reason I likely have fewer problems is that I run all of my IVEX stuff on a separate computer that does nothing else but schematic and board work--it's a cheap old clunker (Compaq Presario 1700), but it does the job just fine, since I don't use it for word processing and Internet and E-mail and who knows what else. All the programming duties on the bench are handled by another even older clunker (Compaq Armada 1700).

You may have noticed with WinBoard that, anytime you move something, it recalculates.

The simplest recovery (if you've saved the file regularly) is to close the file, re-open it, and simply re-import the netlist.