Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

[inflex]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Still working on decoding new board file formats. If you have something you need decoded, and even better, if you have documents/specifications of the format, please do send them along

[highpulse]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

INFLEX , LONG TIME NO SEE MATE , keep the good work coming !!

[Argolin]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Don't know if it's a desired feature, but I noticed on Mac Os it's preventing sleep function, screen included. Just in case it's not wanted now you know
Thanks again for the good work !

[inflex]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Don't know if it's a desired feature, but I noticed on Mac Os it's preventing sleep function, screen included. Just in case it's not wanted now you know
Thanks again for the good work !

Thanks for that. It might be the ImGui engine with its constant polling, not sure, I don't have a system to test on here but I'll have a look.

[Argolin]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Thanks for that. It might be the ImGui engine with its constant polling, not sure, I don't have a system to test on here but I'll have a look.

Anything I could do to help, just ask if you please..

[inflex]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Anything I could do to help, just ask if you please..

Does it do it regardless of OBV being maximised or minimised?

Does OBV take any notable CPU time when it's idle/minimised?

Initially, waaaay back in the first weeks of development, I found OBV would consume a lot of CPU when you minimised it, this was a hiccup in the ImGUI engine basically creating a very tight-loop CPU intensive polling problem, but since then we did some additions which put it to 'sleep' after a few polls without activity.

[Argolin]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Does it do it regardless of OBV being maximised or minimised?

Yes, the behaviour is the same irrespectively, in background or minimized doesn't make any difference

Does OBV take any notable CPU time when it's idle/minimised?

No, Cpu is not an issue whatsoever. It's impossible to tell OBV is open unless one searches for it. It's beautifully lightweight on Cpu and memory under any circumstance.

That's why it took me some time to convince me there was something to troubleshoot somewhere around. When I remembered I could check the activity monitor I discovered that OBV requires high performance Gpu and prevents sleep, unlike other programs I use normally.

[jasko_jacker]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

I'm using this software (on windows, there is a differcence with linux version ?) every day and I want to share my experience with it.
Probably, this software is made to work with brd format; I use principally the fz and asc format. there are some things that I appreciate as the zoom with mouse, other things as the position of the components on the board should be improved because (for me) it's very easy to locate the component if what I see on the screen is equal to the motherboard. Other things:
possibility to change a layer without resize the board, and very important for me make more clear all the connection on the same net with the possibility to switch between one layer to another. This is not a criticism but the considerations on the use of this software. One last thing , put a color table to avoid insertion in hex format.
keep it up, I appreciate your efforts and excuse me for my english

[inflex]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Hello Jasko,

When you refer to "layers", do you mean top and bottom? OpenBoardView is not intended as a multilayer/PCB-trace rendering program; that information is not included in the BRD files usually. When you change between top and bottom, it should not resize, I am unsure what effect you are referring to; can you show a before-and-after screen shot? Have you looked at Gerbv?

If you click on any single node/pin of a net, OpenBoardView will highlight all the other pins also connected.

The parts cannot be rendered more realistically because that information is not included in many of the board files. For most board files, the only information provided is the part-name, pin-locations, net-work name for each pin. Some files do have package names included (I know some .fz and .asc files do) but that is a project for the future to generate all the official outlines.

I did try to include a colour-wheel selector with ImGui (the library that is used to provide the cross-platform interface) but it did not seem to operate; we are waiting on a new release.

Paul.

[daveyk021]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

I am running Windows 7 32 bit Pro. When I double-click on openboardview.exe I get a Windows Message asking if I want to run this program or allow it to make changes, so I click on YES. I get a brief hourglass cursor and then nothing loads or happens.

I downloaded release 7.3 direct from openboardview.org.

Thoughts?

Thanks kindly,

Dave
P.S. - wish it worked on Windows XP. I must maintain a main service computer in Windows XP because a lot of the instruments I work on have support software that only run on XP (older equipment).

[piernov]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Is your video driver up to date? Is you hardware not too old? OpenBoardView uses video hardware acceleration so it needs an OpenGL 3 compatible card by default. You could force it to OpenGL 1.2 if your hardware is too old by setting the "renderer" parameter to "1" in the configuration file.

I would highly recommend against using Windows XP. If you absolutely need it, run it inside a virtual machine without networking.

[Harishiyer21]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Hi Piernov,
Can you help me with an FZ key at your irc channel?

[Harishiyer21]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

I need the fz key for my fz file. Please tell me how you got it.

[crypto_sam]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

can anyone share the FZ Key please?

[inflex]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Go to the IRC channel ( see piernov's post above ) and the FZKey link is in the topic for the channel

[crypto_sam]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Go to the IRC channel ( see piernov's post above ) and the FZKey link is in the topic for the channel

Thank you so much inflex. i didnt knew how to join a IRC Channel, took some tome to find. thanks a lot.

[inflex]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

All good, wish it could be easier, but since we're connected to the project, as you can imagine, we can't be distributing such things.

[drscoot]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

how do I make a config file for the FZ key? Is there an example available?

[RogueProcess]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

Hi there, just wanted to find out if anyone would share an FZ key with me?

Thank you

[akcn]

Re: Openflex Boardview: New boardview software (linux, windows and OSX)

need fz key, the irc is not available. I tried to connect it but failed, it took me a whole afternoon.