Let‘s get started…

The DesignSpark PCB start screen
- You can use the schematic view to select and connect components, and then transfer to the PCB design view to arrange the components on the board
- You can head straight to the PCB design view and do everything there

Select Schematic Design to start off

Your blank schematic canvas full of potential

Adding components is easy – search, select then place

Adding the GPIO connector – an essential component for our Raspberry Pi board
To place the component in your design, just double-click on the name of it. The pop up box will disappear, and you will have the schematic component following your mouse (components are orange until you click to place them):

Components will ‘float‘ with your mouse until you click to place it down
Click the ‘canvas’ to place your item. In this example, the GPIO connector comes in two parts, so you’ll need to click again to place the second part:

The GPIO connector starts our schematic diagram

Now we add an LED to our circuit, to connect to our GPIO

Our LED is now placed into our schematic

The final component for this simple board – a resistor, for the LED.

All parts are now in place for our example board
TIP: We‘re using parts from the built-in library, but you can download more from the DesignSpark site. I will cover this in a future blog.
To connect components, select the ‘Add Schematic Connection’ button to the left:

Press the ‘Add Schematic Connection‘ button to connect your components
Your mouse is now ready to connect parts. All you need to do is connect the ends of each part (you connect to the ‘x‘ part of each component), remembering to check the polarity of things like LEDs.

Our components are all connected
To move over to the PCB view, click ‘Tools‘ and then ‘Translate to PCB:

We now translate our schematic to a PCB
The new PCB Wizard box will pop up. Click ‘Next‘ to start.

The PCB wizard helps you move your design over to a board
The next page sets up the PCB technology. Don‘t worry too much about this, just keep the option ticked to ‘Use Default Technolgy‘. Below this, select your precision – everything I do is in mm, so select this and set the precision a ‘1‘ – for a simple board like this we can work in mm.
TIP: Later on you can select to work with your PCB grid in fractions of your precision.

Here we specify the units we will work with
Click next to go to the next step, which will be the ‘Layers‘ settings.
Now this simple design could easily get away with a 1-layer board, but select 2 layers anyway as this is the norm. Then select ‘top side‘ and ‘bottom side‘ solder mask and ‘cover vias‘ – this is the layer that we can later apply print to (such as GPIO numbers, board name etc). Leave all the other values as they are:

We‘re going for a 2 layer board here, but one layer would be enough
The next section defines the board outline i.e. the shape/cut of the board. It doesn‘t really matter what you enter here as you can adjust it later, so let‘s just got for 50×50.
Keep all other values as default:

The board size can be adjusted later if needed
Select ‘Arrange outside the board‘ and click next:

Simpler designs are better off manually arranged
The last screen just gives you an opportunity to change the default file save path if you feel the need:

Make a note of where you save your file
Once you‘ve done that, press ‘Finish‘ to enter PCB view.
You should now see a large green square, and your components just outside of it. That square is your PCB outline:

We now have a PCB outline and components to arrange
To arrange your components on the PCB, simply click and hold on a component to move it. If you want to rotate a component, just click ‘R‘ on your keyboard whilst it is selected.
Here is our single LED design with the GPIO re-arranged to be in the top-left corner for a Model A/B Raspberry Pi board (the GPIO has moved on the Model B+):

We‘ve aranged the GPIO to fit a Raspberry Pi
Our simple design doesn’t need all of that board space, so we simply click and drag the green board outline shape to resize it. Here‘s my resized board:

Resize your PCB to save space and money on manufacturing costs
At the moment your traces will be all over the place after placing your parts on your PCB (in this example, diagonal). The easiest way to re-route the traces is to use the built in ‘Auto Route Nets‘ tool that tries to work out the ideal route for all your traces whilst trying to avoid clashes and overlapping at the same time.
To use this, click ‘Tools‘ > ‘Auto Route Nets‘ > ‘All Nets‘:

Auto Routing is a very helpful feature to save you time and headaches
The result on our example board can be seen below. Notice the blue and red lines, with yellow circles? The different colour lines represent different layers of the board (we have 2 remember) and the yellow circles are ‘Vias‘ which just mean the track is changing layer:

Here is our Auto Routed board – much tidier
Here‘s an example of what laying a track looks like:

Tracks can be added manually if required
TIP: Right-click a track to change it‘s layer or other properties
Let‘s add a really bad name to our simple board. Click on the ‘Add Text‘ button. A box will pop up. Enter a name for the board (I‘ve used ‘NaffBoard‘ here) and make sure you select the layer ‘Top Silkscreen‘ (because it gets printed on the silkscreen):

Make sure you select ‘Top Silkscreen‘ or your board house may not print it
Once you‘ve done that, your text will ‘float‘ until you click to place it (behaves the same way as a component). I‘ve added mine to the bottom of this board as can be seen in the next section in the 3D model.
TIP: Double-click on text to change font, size alignment and more.
Click ‘File‘ > ‘Save As’ and make a note of where your project file is.
3D View
Want to see what your board would look like in the flesh? Click ‘3D‘ then ‘3D View‘ to see a model of your new board. Here‘s the example board in 3D:

The 3D view tool is VERY cool!
Click on ‘Output‘, then ‘Manufacturing Plots‘. This box will show:

We‘re making Gerbers – but there are lots of other export formats available
On the left (tick box section) you have the different plots. Everywhere else is generally the settings for each plot. Now the default settings here aren‘t quite right for PCB Manufacturers, so let‘s make the neccassary changes.
(Credit to Jason Barnett here for his help working this out, and the equally handy guide on his blog: (post no longer available)
Here‘s what you need to do:
- Delete ‘Top Copper (Paste)‘, ‘Bottom Copper (Paste)‘ and ‘Drill Ident Data – Through Hole‘ (click to select, then click ‘Delete Plot‘ on each)
- Tick all remaining tick boxes
- Click ‘Add Plot‘ and select ‘Gerber‘ on the pop-up box. Rename this ‘Board Outline‘, change the type to ‘Outline‘, then select the ‘Layers‘ tab and double click on ‘(Board Outline)‘
- Click on ‘Drill Data – through Hole‘, then the ‘Output‘ tab, and then the ‘Device Setup‘ button. Un-tick ‘Separate files for plated and unplated holes‘ if already ticked.
- Click ‘Options‘ (bottom right) and un-tick ‘Include design name in plot file name‘. Also set the output path whilst you‘re here, to tell the application where to save your gerber files.
You‘re now ready to run the export. Click ‘Run‘ and give it a minute to export the Gerber files. A text file log will appear, just close that and head to the folder that you selected the files to be saved in – you should have a file for each plot we just made.
Now, the file extensions for these files need to be changed to make them board house friendly. Follow the steps below:
- Board Outline.gbr [change to] Board Outline.gko
- Bottom Copper.gbr [change to] Botton Copper.gbl
- Bottom Solder Mask.gbr [change to] Bottom Solder Mask.gbs
- Drill data – Through Hole.drl [change to] Drill data – Through Hole.xln
- Top Copper.gtr [change to] Top Copper.gbl
- Top Silkscreen.gbr [change to] Top Silkscreen.gto
- Top Solder Mask.gbr [change to] Top Solder Mask.gts
Once you‘ve done that, create a new .zip file and move them inside. Call the .zip file whatever you want, ideally the board name.
If you want to test the file, companies like OSHPark.com have an online Gerber checker – but this can be fiddly as they usually look for bottom silkscreen even if you don‘t have any print on the underside. You can get around this by creating a ‘Bottom Silkscreen‘ plot when you make the gerbers.
More Tips & Tricks
I plan to write a further blog on DesignSpark PCB, showing you some of the more advanced features such as downloading parts from the RS site, editing components, creating board outline cut-outs and so on. Keep an eye out for that
WIN a DesignSpark PCB made by the Average Man!
I spent some time fiddling with DesignSpark PCB so couldn‘t resist getting a board made up, just to see if it all worked (it did!). I called it the ‘RPi32‘ – it simply contains 2 MCP23017 chips and headers to give you 32 additional inputs/outputs to connect ‘things‘ to (LEDs etc).
Here‘s my DesignSpark PCB design:

This one took a little longer to figure out…
Here‘s the 3D view:

The 3D view, once again a VERY cool feature
This is the manufactured PCB with headers soldered (MCP23017 not fitted):

My RPi32 board…not bad for a first try
The board works but I overlooked the size / outline when I designed it (only works as a stacker as some of the Pi‘s components get in the way), and also the text size (went a bit too small in places) – but they work great when stacked on top of another breakout board. Hey, you live and learn.
Enter the Competition
I have 5 of these up for grabs, and RS have kindly offered to supply the parts to complete the boards. This time it‘s a Twitter ‘retweet and mention‘ competition, so use the button below to be in with a chance of winning.
Competition closes Saturday 16th August 2015, 22:00 GMT.
*** COMPETITION CLOSED ***
I‘ll also be taking some to the Southend Raspberry Jam on the 16th August, so come see me there if you can make it.
As always, if you have any questions – find me on Twitter or post a comment below.
Average Man
Nice guide! I’ll definitely recommend this to my coworkers.
Possible typo in gerber file naming convention: I think that the top copper layer needs to be be a .gtl file instead of gbl (bottom copper layer). Atleast according to oshpark’s website.
Hi Kevin
Thanks for the feedback 🙂
I have actually been using gbl with all of my board designs so far. They seem to be picked up by the board houses fine, but then again, I do name them ‘top copper’ etc so I guess they figure it out. Thanks though – will check that next time.