SCHEMATIC ----------- INTROCUCTION This is a suite of programs written by James Fuller to extend and give legacy support to SCHEDIT, part of the PROTEL 99 suite of printed circuit board production programs. These were written by Nick Martin in Hobart about 1985, and Protel is now known as Altium. While AUTOTRAX, the PCB part of the PROTEL suite, is quite well supplied with import/export and printing functions, its poor cousin SCHEDIT never was, in its critical lack of colour plotting, postscript export, bmp import and dxf output. Even the supplied drivers for 24pin dot matrix printers were very hard to use. Furthermore the file format of SCHEDIT is largely binary and not easy to interpret. This was all a shame as fundamentally SCHEDIT is quite good and convenient to use, and has accumumlated a lot of diagrams in .S01 format and additions to its libraries. Also SCHEDIT has been improved by the higher resolution graphic drivers written for AUTOTRAX, and by the PCX export drivers which work in schplot as well as traxplot - the output modules of TRAXPLOT and SCHEDIT. Unlike many modern CAD program it has nice jogging with arrow keys and convenient grid snap. . The claim to fame of SCHEDIT was the autorouting ability - sadly one which has been little used, mainly because good manual layout can often do a better job. Protel released a simplified and free version of AUTOTRAX called EASYTRAX which works fine, but does not have the ability to import or export PCB files to AUTOTRAX, thus rendering it of little use. There is some limited document interchange possible but not in a direction between versions that would allow legacy drawings to move to that platform. Abilities of SCHEMATIC. Schematic was written in C++ to achieve a set of executables compiled with Borland 6. It runs on Windows xp and does not seem very hungry of resources. It used to run on win98 before the library FlowValWin was added to place window location within the 800x600 screen that some people use ;-) The most remarkable ability of SCHEMATIC is to render a .S01 file on the screen and to print it in high resolution, most usefully to a laser printer, a colour postscript format. Several aspects of the drawing can be enhanced or altered: * line width and colour * annotation font and colour * junction colour * docbox font and colour Also it is possible to "layer seperate" .S01 files into the various objects and make auxilliary .S01 files from the layers. Further functionality is achieved with related programs which can act directly on SCHEDIT files to augment libs with imported BMP files, inspect libraries, add bitmaps to .S01 files and extract bitmaps from .S01 files. COPYRITE: SCHEMATIC is not an illegal copy of SCHEDIT. None of the SCHEDIT source code was used in the creation of SCHEMATIC which derives purely from an inspection of .S01 files and the functionality of SCHEDIT. If the current owners of Protel wish to distribute SCHEMATIC, or incorporate it, then just attribution to Flowtrack is required. It is planned to GPL the SCHEMATIC source code. The FILES: The main executable is Schemat2.exe. There are a set of auxillary files FlowValWin.bpl ..... dialog window placement borlndmm.dll cc3260mt.dll cg32.dll flowtrack.bpl old-flowtrack.bpl indy60.bpl rtl60.bpl stlpmt45.dll vcl60.bpl vclx60.bpl Then there are the lesser executables: BmpConv.exe BmpToSrc.exe This program takes a BMP and adds it to a .src file. *.src files are made by SLM.EXE an auxilliary of the original SCHEDIT package. These .src files are "decompiled" schedit library files, *.lib. The bitmap must be monocrome (two colour). Once in a .src file, it can be recompiled with SLM.EXE back to a .lib file and used in the SCHEDIT package. Libman.exe This program inspects a SCHEDIT library file and lists the items, and lists the details of each if asked, such as pinout, name, package etc. It is very convenient for finding items lost in various libraries as well as seeing their attributes at a glance. Dump.exe This gives a listing of the contents of a .S01 file. It can provide export at very low level such as a .csv file. SchedBmp.exe This program presents the bitmaps included in a .S01 file and allows them to be collected. ******************************************************************* Schemat2.exe...The latest version (171,690Bytes) This is the "do all" program which is a viewer of .S01 files, a customiser of the presentation, an exporter through any windows printer, and a creator of .S01 files representing different classes of objects - with a view to using them as work resources in SCHEDIT or of plotting them with various colour pens so as to simulate a multi pen hpgl driver that is so sorely needed. HOWTO All these programs when opened need to load a SCHEDIT file and you need to browse to where they are stored if the location is incorrectly stored in the relevant .INI file. To make Schematic dissect a .S01 file you need to run it with the --export switch. It will automatically create a directory above the one with the SCHEDIT files in with the name of the .S01 file opened. There it will create several .S01 files called line.S01, annotate.S01, Junction.s01, Bitmaps.S01 which are as you would imagine and can be opened in SCHEDIT. FOLLOWUP The programs seem to compile OK in Borland 10. This may help them stay current with more recent releases of Windows. There are hopes of porting the program to a Qt environment. It is tempting to go the extra step and make this program into a fully functional CAD program. ********************************************************************** HOWTO DOCUMENTATION:: schematic.exe ------------- MENU LISTING File ---- *Open This makes schematic look for a *.S01 file to open. If it does not look in the right directory then you have to browse to a place where there are *.S01 files and click on your choice. *Recent Files This give a quick way to reopen files you have recently closed, so long as you have not changed their location or names in the path. *Print This brings up the usual windows print window where you can set printer, copies, properties. If you have set the output to file, the next windows will ask for a file name and location. *print setup This alows considerable choice of printer and function, but not port. You have to go to control panel, printer, properties for that. *Exit Closes the program VIEW ---- *Font Not yet implemented *Repaint This seems to do nothing visible, but under some malfunctions may be useful. *Background This resets the background colour. A palette of basic colours come up and you can simply click on one. If none of the basic colours is appropriate then you can define a custom colour. Left click on a black custom colour and then "define custom colours" and a spectrum area will appear. click on that and the tone bar, and then "add to Custom Colours". *Page This sets the window area in the event that the diagram crosses the borders. Options are the same as in Schedit; A0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A B C D E OBJECTS ------- *Bitmap This sets presentation of bitmaps. If nothing happens it is becasue the screen resolution expected is more than schematic has found on your computer. *Docbox Similar except that it relates to Schedit document boxes *Annotate Similar except relevant to drawing annotations *Line Data Similar except that it alters the presentation of the four types of lines in Schedit diagrams *Junction Similar but related to junctions in drawing. The detail of these alterations is as follows: You have to select a line type with a radio button, a windows line type with a button and a line width, then click on a colour. Action is instantaneous and you close the window. Note that there is not a free choice of line width and type. This is a windows limitation. It is possible to add colours by double clicking on a colour and following the proceedure above. "Save" records these colour selections. "Load" is to retrieve previous settings. *Que Currently this displays your computers resolution setting in pixels horizontal, pixels vertical. ******************************************************************* SchedBmp.exe ------------ This is a utility that appends a bitmap to a *.s01 file directly. It does not bother where it puts it and SCHEDIT can be invoked to locate the bitmap. It only has two buttons: *File This opens a .S01 file of your choice *Insert This appends a *.bmp of your choice. Note that it has to be only two colour. (not just greyscaled!) TThe display is of red lines showing the boundaries of bitmaps in the .S01 file. Unfortunately there is a problem with the "Save" and "Save as" screen you are supplied with; .... they save without the appended bitmap :-( ******************************************************************* LibMan.exe ---------- This is a library viewer and exporter. It throws up an "open" screen which should be in the same place as it last was used, but if wrong you can brows to the location of SCHEDIT *.lib files. Opening one produces a spreadsheet of information. "Name" is obviously the library element "Que1" is a field of unknown function "Bitmap Via" refers to location of bitmap for the device; repeated bitmaps are not repeated in a .lib file probably to save space. "Que2" is another mysterious field "image" is a location that the bitmap data is stored as a buffer "Pins" information related to the number and location of pins on the device "sec" is the number of devices in the package "C-B" ....? "R-B" ....? "Pins" is number of pins on the device ...... ..... ************************************************************************* Dump.exe -------- File ---- This opens a *.S01 file in a display of 16 colums of two hex characters (16 bytes) *Save This allows a copy of the file to another name *Close Wont work #Exit Closes program. Search ------ *Pattern Marking an area and then clicking the find options searches for similar areas of data. * .........computer crashed at this point - not the fault of schematic... ****************** sorry, I will complete this document when I eventually get a stable Windows machine operating. Kali McLaughlin 5/9/2011 ************************