this style is actually magnificent like, from a glance, it's still a 45 degree locked, boring board, but shall you look closer, you'll see beautiful curved traces
@@TruDruChocolateMilk Doing great, I've been working ofna really cool secret project, but it'll probably be a few more months before I announce and release it.
As an avionics repair tech, I have sense of dread every time I see rounded runs. It has nothing to do with the runs but rather the age and tolerances of the components. Every board that was hand drawn is a monster to troubleshoot. Even seeing the melted boards in this video gives me that sense of dread.
Hand drawn boards are easier to troubleshoot for me. It's easier to find stuff on the solder side because each section of the trace pattern in much more distinct than on CAD boards.
1:30 I would argue that MOST styles are 'born from limitations,' The gorgeous angularity and serifed fonts of Roman writing came from the limitation of having to chisel the characters into stone, and the 70's era 'checkbook font' that helped define what was futuristic in that era was born from making a font that was both human-readable AND readable by a machine scanning the magnetic ink at high speed.
4:40 this is not the only argument against this type of design. It's also harder for a human to follow the traces and therefore increases the difficulty of repair.
@@larrybud Yeap. Like counting pencils that have been randomly thrown on the table vs counting ones which have been laid next to each other. It might have its uses for extremely tight layouts, but I don't like it for that reason.
I did suffer a strong moment of stress when I saw that board and decides it's a "not buy" parameter for me when looking for electronics to buy. It was just radiating too much chaos. Might be because I once did design with wire-wrap, and remember the hell of tracing wires.
@@perwestermark8920 Point to point for the win. This stuff here, I don't care how it was done, is never impressive, unless I can tell no computer was involved. Doing anything by hand requires skill, any chimp can use a computer.
@@MadScientist267 You may think any chimp can use a computer. But what do you think a chimp can acctually accomplish? Any chimp can use a typewriter too - but what great stories have you seen chimps produce? Seems it takes a bit of extra skills to write a new Hamlet or Murder on The Orient Express or The Lord of the Rings maybe Anna Karenina.
You can talk track routing plugins for KiCad whenever you want 🙂 I'll be here for it. The concept of "lowest possible energy" is something that I deeply appreciate, as both a programmer and a lazy person.
Also, arbitrary angle routing can aid in track delay matching, because of the effect the fiber weave has on the length of parallel signals on multiples of 90 degrees and 45 degrees.
Definitely thought I was going to be watching you throw a bunch of PCBs into a furnace but I was happily surprised that instead it was a KiCad plugin. Super easy to install with the package manager and awesome one-click results. Thank you!
Old engineers are still debating with me that 45 degree tracks are the best choice. I heard this from even an RF engineer. Thank God, I can find videos like this to ease my pain.
One other problem I could see with highly optimized tracks like the ones you get with TopoR is maintenance. Those layouts are much harder to comprehend and to check for humans when you are searching for problems, both during design debugging and during repairs later
A good solution is to use the standard layout during prototyping, then optimize the layout for production so your boards are smaller and cost less to make
The design of the Topor boards is super interesting. Its how I imagine a computer building itself would arrange its own traces. Ruthless efficiency in an oddly organic aesthethic
There is another valid argument against the ruthlessly efficient routing approach (and for the record, I’m with you, I think it looks neat): it is more difficult to grasp it’s logical structure and discern how things may function, which on some (not all) designs, could hamper its ability to be iterated, improved upon, or repaired.
Yeah, it could easily result in one missing wire being routed and then the entire design looks totally different. It's also not super great for power circuit design, where you probably want to repeat a perfectly operating design to multiple boards rather than "optimize" each time
@@wefyb2 All valid points. That said, I do think there is plenty of room for circuit layouts that place a priority on aesthetics as well as efficiency and the more prosaic considerations that dictate most board designs. Even if one discounts the modern DIY and hobbyist trends that have resulted in a lot of devices that intentionally show off their internals with exposed circuitry and laser-cut acrylic cases--electronic engineering professionals have a long tradition of appreciating and critiquing PCB layouts and the skills involved in balancing all of the complex factors that go into them. It's certainly a rather impractical thing to do, but if I saw a board that was not only expertly laid out with efficient use of space, minimal reliance on vias, and proper placement of things like semiconductors and electrolytics to promote long-term reliability--but also employed beautifully flowing lines and artfully designed features, I'd appreciate the effort. But I'm also someone who will never be involved with any projects larger than one-off curiosities and personal endeavors, so shit like this for its own sake is perfectly acceptable in my opinion.
A point worth making. "Shorter traces" or even "fewer vias" (although I have a personal bias for these) may not even be rational objectives. I'd hope that ground plane optimisation (including pcb fills taking into account star grounding) is another area it might be interesting for this software to tackle. Ah, if only I had more spare time…
There are so many additional constrains which are hard to put into software. If we would use a perfect optimization at work, it would be a total nightmare. Any change could move a lot of stuff on the PCB, requiring a lot of re-qualification steps. Instead our "less efficient" designs allow most modifications to be done in a very local and efficient manner.
I don't agree with the statement of "sharp edges are not a problem for modern manufacturing". Yes, when you order 100 pieces, it is not a problem. But when the production goes to 10's of millions or you are pushing the technology to its limits (with the circuit density), you will see very clearly where the defects most often are. Mainly relative to how little it costs to prevent them. With few 100 of pieces produced you will practically never see a 100ppm rate defect, so it does not make much sense to spend even a single minute of extra effort on it during the design. But with a 10 mil production we are talking about 1000 defective pieces. And that becomes way other story with relation to how much extra design effort still pays off to address these.
I actually clicked this video expecting to hear that some type of old circuit boards had easily recyclable material that one could recover by melting it. I'm not even mad, very interesting content.
As a junior engineer at my first job I designed my first PCB with free angles, being inspired by audio equipment of the 80s. That was indeed like placing rubber bands in PADS. I collected a harsh response from everyone who saw my design, going as far as denying me a promotion, probably because of that, and other acts of not conforming to peer pressure. Now I work in space industry and already proved myself numerous times. I admit that while switching jobs I give a clear warning that I'm not taking any orders or advice that have no solid reasoning behind it. Excellent video, got subscribed for more.
I began making PCBs in 1975 with tape and a razor blade; both directly on copper for a single job, or on a mylar sheet to make multiple copies using positive photoresist. I experimented with curves and 90° and 45° angles. The end result was I made curved tracks for my personal projects, as curves were faster to draw and more reliable in the ferric chloride solution. But all customers loved angled tracks and the "professional" aesthetic of the finished PCB. I transitioned to ORCAD x DOS around 1988, and curved tracks were gone by then. My designs went up to 200 MHz operating frequency, and I never found any increase of EMI / RFI when compared to a rounded-track PCB. Over the years, I forgot about those wavy PCBs, with long strings of FND500 displays or arrays of memory chips crossed by waved tracks drawn by hand. Now, watching this video, I transfixed what I saw. You are trying to get good old wavy PCB tracks out of modern PCB routing software! I'm honoured. I bet you listen to music from vinyl disks with a Shure cartridge and a DC-coupled audio amplifier...
Great work, this really improves the look of the circuit boards. I can see why Topo R isn’t very common, who would buy a mainboard, for example, that looks like it was designed by an intern on crack.
Wow. Just adding a cubic bezier on those pads made it look so much better 👌👌. Ive always loved the look of old hand drawn traces, and now I can do it with ease! This would be FANTASTIC for retrofit projects such as replacement parts for old computers that have hand drawn traces.
was thinking it will be really about melting and salvaging metals from PCBs LOL but the video kept me watching and i am glad i watch it... will try using your plugin for my next PCB design for sure... thanks for the great video
You convinced me! I grew up with Elektor-PCBs and I liked their style. That was in the 70ies. Reading your title, I thought why and how I should "melt" my PCBs. And at the end, with your melted PCB, I'm ... just downloaded, installed and quickly checked. I think, you started a revolution!
I just want you to know that I saw your video almost a year ago and today I spent over 40 minutes looking for it online to watch it again and I didn't gave up until I found it, it is that good, so thanks for the upload.
On the contrary, I was excited to find out that this video was about a Kicad plugin! I plan on giving it a try for my next aesthetic project. Thank you for adding something great to the collective.
This is great! I basically just finished manually routing a design that uses arbitrary angles and smooth corners because of space limitations. I will look into this and especially TopoR as I think these tools could really help in the kinds of designs I'm working on.
I was expecting to see a video about rounded tracks... Certainly not the "melting electronics" you've offered at the end of the video! You've made my day thank you for that.
I was saddened by the plug-in ad and not being hot melting circuits design method but over I am very satisfied with this upload. Thank for I’ve learned something new
Never made a PCB myself but I've always been fascinated by the technology, ingenuity and engineering behind the design factor. I still remember the advert for CadSoft's (now Autodesk) EAGLE in early 90s electronic catalogues. Loved that Eagle logo.
Can't believe this video doesn't have more views. I'm a software engineer and know little about circuitry and electronics. But your arguments seem very grounded (pun intended), and I'm happy to believe that this is a pioneering trend in the making. I want to see more molten circuit boards!
I like the idea, but the resultant circuit boards seem too orderly to me. wibbly 70's circuit boards had unsteady tracks, slightly wobbling in width and direction.
I wonder how well you could use a noise displacement algorithm, like is sometimes used to "simulate" handwritten text. It'd be hard because of fixed component pads and manufacturing tolerances, but could be neat.
The only other critique i can come up with for topologically perfect circuit boards is on-board repairability, but even that can be a non-issue. I'm sure it's useful for bleeding edge tech and extremely space efficient requirements, i.e. cubesats. Very interesting!
My dad works at a company that does a lot of hardware development for the automotive industry, he had a project a while ago where he had to design hardware for a 100W coolant circulation pump that keeps pumping coolant after engine is shut off to prevent the water that was in the engine block at point of shutoff to overpressure and boil. The original spec was 25W at 130°C operating temperature in a 10x5x5cm ish form factor. Spec moved up to 100W during dev cycle, everything else stayed the same. Absolute nightmare that project.
@@Blacktronics As someone who works in automotive RnD as well, I can *feel* this on a spiritual level. Automotive engineers are a different breed, I tell ya. One day, the project leading engineer enters the room and surprisedly tells us that we need to build everything over from scratch - he kind of forgot that the engine dyno also needed to fit the ... uhm, you know ... the *exhaust* ? What? It's an engine, of course it's going to need one?! We had to tear down an almost complete construction and re-re-arrange almost everything back to where it *already was before* we re-arranged it in the first place. :|
Just wanted to say thanks. I've been working on a project for a while, and after watching figured it was a great idea save the one thing you mentioned; "ease of design". I'm using Kicad, and saw your plugin on the package manager! So, off I went with it and It's so amazing. It's actually helped me reach a higher component density, and it looks so beautiful.
I've been rounding my designs since 2010 only because I liked the look. I personally think the efficient trace designs from Topo-R looks really cool. Thank you for the gracious contribution to the art via the KiCAD plugin.
Amazing work! I was meddling with this idea a few years ago and ended giving up on it, feels good to know that someone else might pick it up! It's the joy of open source after all
I came across this vid by accident, but was thoroughly drawn in from the start. I took a lot of things apart in the 60's and 70's and I remember the fluid designs in old radios and walkie talkies of that era (and the peculiar odor of "Made In Japan" circuitry - "waxy" is as close as I can get to describing). Thanks for putting together a lovely and thought-provoking video. I'm just getting into circuit board design and taking a class on KiCad. I'll turn the instructor onto this vid!
I was click baited into a pleasant informative video and in the end, it satisfied me with a visual and audible simulation of circuit boards melting, which gave me chills throughout my body. If there is such a channel that is dedicated to these simulations, I would love to subscribe as I did to this one.
As someone just stumbling in here with zero prior or related experience, the revelation that you can build rf filters by drawing triangles in the traces actually got me to exclaim out loud "Are you effing serious!?" Wow. mind blowing moment. Thanks for sharing.
I know nothing about circuit boards, and have never really paid any attention to them apart from a brief “huh, cool patterns”. Yet this video-for some reason-appeared on my recommended list and it was really very informative, entertaining and engaging. Great content, thanks!
