Changes from release 2.1.0.400 to 2.1.0.

600 6/27/05 --------------------------------This is a minor release that addresses following: --------------------------------Cool Item: New user manual, over 100 pages of great technical information on PCB123 V2 layo ut. Available under the help menu. New features added: 1. Added plane-layer knowledge to the connectivity system. 2. Added a new user preference that allows you to display copper pour as hollow on the screen. This greatly speeds up painting and reduces flickering on boards with complex copper pours. 3. Rewrote Auto-ECO to minimize the disturbance of existing routing while perfor ming the changes. Improvements to existing functionality: 1. Fixed annoying footprint binding problem when loading some netlists. It now c orrectly remembers footprints after being told once. 2. Fixed lengthy startup time on systems that are network connected but not inte rnet connected. 3. Fixed .014 Pad Annular DRC warning. Anything using a 0.014 drill is now assum ed to be a via and therefore can have a smaller annular. 4. Fixed problem where you could potentially route on a plane layer. 5. Fixed an Arc picking problem. 6. Fixed the File/Save problem once and for all. It doesn t get cute or clever; it just saves the file to wherever it was opened from. 7. Fixed problem with non-orthogonal pad rotations in mirrored parts. Non-orthog onal component rotations were fine, only strangely rotated pads inside component s were affected. 8. Fixed subtle netlist format differences generated from some CAD packages. The netlist readers are now tolerant of these small formatting differences.

Changes from release 2.0.0.6300 to 2.1.0.400 4/15/05 --------------------------------This is a major release that addresses following: --------------------------------New features added: 1. Added offline help

2. Added a running count of DRC errors on the status bar. 3. Added 3-D view. Improvements to existing functionality: 1. ECO process no longer defaults to the Designs folder when looking for a netli st. 2. Load netlist now correctly resolves explicit part library path. 3. Protel and Tango netlist importers are now tolerant of commas or hyphens bein g used as a component pin delimiter. 4. Entering negative text rotations no longer complains. It performs a clockwise rotation. 5. Reconnect is run upon file load now. 6. New connectivity engine handles and detects connectivity through copper. 7. Print artwork now displays a print setup dialog that allows you select a prin ter and paper orientation. 8. Pasted copper pour is now correctly net instanced. 9. Drawing now defaults to the silkscreen layer in the part editor. 10. Non-plated holes are now shown in Print Artwork. 11. When moving a reference designator, a line is now drawn from the designator text to the center of the component if belongs to. 12. No longer adds multiple copies of reference designators when manually adding new components on the back side of the board. 13. When creating a new library, the name of the library is now selected as the default library to save a part into. 14. Editing an existing component on the back of the board no longer swaps the s ilkscreen layers. 15. Text inside copper pour is properly cleared out. Refresh all now updates objects in the left pane. 16. DRC is no longer performed on objects that are not on a routing or plane lay er. 17. Silkscreen-Over-Pad violations are no longer reported on boards that do not have a silkscreen. 18. It is no longer possible to draw a self-intersecting copper pour. 19. Resetting user preferences to factory default no longer disturbs the fab set tings for the current board. 20. Freestyle routing can now end in a via by pressing v .

21. It is so longer possible to start a freestyle route on a non-routing layer.

Fixed: 1. Fixed problem with Cut and Paste, when a group was used as the source for a c opy operation multiple times it was potentially reusing new net instances and th erefore creating rat lines between copied instances. All paste operations are un ique now. 2. Fixed board stats to include board-level pins in the count. 3. Fixed ECO crash when number of pins in a modified footprint is less than the original footprint and the deleted pins were tied to a net. 4. Fixed .199in Non-Plated drill crash. 5. Fixed DRC marker crash. 6. Fixed erroneous rat lines being display during group move. 7. Fixed erroneous arc problems in DRC. 8. Fixed problem with loading a netlist with ampersand me or footprint name. & characters in the part na

9. Fixed annoying Drill Size message when changing between plated and non-plated holes. 10. Fixed erroneous Trace-Stops-On-Wrong-Layer DRC marker. 11. Fixed backside Silkscreen-Over-Pad checking. 12. Fixed bizarre scientific notation coordinate display for unusual grids. 13. Fixed crash when copying objects from one board to another are the source do cument is closed. 14. Fixed crash when closing from Windows taskbar while minimized. 15. Fixed problem with the Find operation when a net had the same name as a comp onent. It would find the net and not the component. 16. Fixed crash in Left pane after document is closed. 17. Fixed Autorouter crash when attempting to route a tiny segment inside of a p ad. 18. Fixed Text layer display in left pane. 19. Fixed various manual routing crashes. 20. Fixed print problem with oddly-rotated pads. 21. Fixed printing problem with arcs. 22. Fixed situations where a visually routed net still shows rat lines. 23. Fixed file-transfer hanging problem. 24. Fixed problem with the Paste operation placing objects off-grid. 25. Fixed part search dialog clipping problem with large system fonts.

26. Fixed a copper pour problem that involved track segments spanning multiple c opper pours from different nets.

Changes from release 2.0.0.5796 to 2.0.0.6300 1/31/05 --------------------------------This is a general maintenance release that fixes the following: --------------------------------User preferences: 1. We have added User Preferences to the View menu. You can load and save prefer ence sets as well as set your default preferences for new designs. 2. Display positive Soldermask(s): You can now toggle the polarity of your Solde rmask(s), either positive or negative. 3. Display negative power planes: You can now toggle the polarity of power plane s. Viewing a power plane as a negative allows you to draw your split lines with ease. 4. Per-layer display: If you set Hi-Contrast s lo-color to invisible you can quic kly cycle through and view individual layers while in Hi-Contrast mode. 5. More powerful spacing rules for Design Rule Check. Besides a global minimum s pacing value, you can now specify spacing on a per-layer basis and spacing on a per-net basis. Copper pour will obey these spacing rules too! 6. Additional autorouter controls: You can now specify the preferred routing dir ection for each layer, and the cost of routing on a layer. You can also now spec ify the cost of adding a via including no vias at all! ECO Changes: 1. ECO now detects net renames: When running ECO, a node-by-node comparison is n ow done on nets to see if a simple rename (or series of renames) on a net will r esult in a correct match against the master database without disturbing any exis ting routing. It will handle circular renames such as: NET1 -> NET2 NET2 -> NET3 NET3 -> NET1 2. ECO finally handles part type changes: If the only change you made to your sc hematic was changing a part from one type to another, ECO would not implement th at change. Now it does. Bug Fixes/improvements: 1. Print Artwork: Mirror now works Thermal reliefs on plane layers now print cor rectly and arcs now print correctly. 2. Pad geometries in libraries are now fully honored when instantiating them on a board. This also means a new DRC check was added that checks for minimum pad a nnular ring greater than the drill size. If you perform a gross technology chang e such as switching from 1oz copper to 2.5oz copper then the software will ask y ou if it should go ahead and automatically meet the required minimum annular pad sizes for manufacturing. In short: no more mysterious pad size changes!

3. Freestyle routing incremental change: you can now merge two nets together in freestyle mode. If you start drawing a new trace from an existing net object and then click a corner over an object from a different net, you will be prompted t o merge the two nets. 4. Fixed the polyline picking problem. 5. Fixed editing multiple pins. The values will stick now. (To whom this affecte d: I m really sorry about this bug. It must have been a real pain.) 6. Fixed the proxy problem. 7. Updated board qty and lead time. 8. Added Expedite Order feature. 9. Silkscreen over vias not reported anymore. 10. Fixed errant hole-to-hole (blowout) violations. 11. You can now change pin shapes to square without stupid message. 12. Better color swatch in design pane. 12. Tango netlist importer now more tolerant of net name position (IVEX emitted) . 14. Fixed coordinate readout problem. No longer uses scientific notation on stra nge numbers and will always be accurate up to 4 decimal places regardless of uni t type.

Changes from release 2.0.0.5018 to 2.0.0.5796 11/19/04 --------------------------------This is a general maintenance release that fixes the following: --------------------------------New/Improved features 1. New part search facility. Finding part is now much simpler and more flexible. Incorporating a much simpler default interface, a search will hit on part type names, footprint names, or the description fields of either. Matching hits are d isplayed in a list that shows the number of pins and the pitch between pins. Eve n on your own parts! Try it! There is also an advanced search that is library-ce ntric, allowing you to look at the contents of a specific library or specify lib rary filters. 2. Design templates through the New Board Wizard. Creating new designs just beca me much simpler with the New Board Wizard. In one place, you can specify the boa rd technology, what netlist (if any) to use, and whether to use one of our pre-d efined board templates or one of your own! We (and you) have taken a giant step toward design reuse! 3. Load/Save selections to disk. You can now select some objects and save them t

o disk. These saved objects can then be loaded into a design at any time. How di d we do this? By creating the PCB123-Neutral-Library-Format. This is a human rea dable file that allows for data to be imported/exported, to/from the PCB123 layo ut software. We have decided to publish this format (all you busy code-writing b eavers, have at it!) 4. Revamped the ECO (Engineering Change Order) process to more correctly recogni ze existing parts in default libraries. 5. Introduced new code to optimize the loading speed of existing libraries. 6. Over 100 reported bugs/annoyances have been eliminated.

Changes from release 2.0.0.4677 to 2.0.0.5018 09/03/04 PCB123 Build 5018 introduces several new and exciting areas and improves on many existing features. --------------------------------This is a general maintenance release that fixes the following: --------------------------------1. Freestyle routing. What many of you have been asking for is finally here. Po int and click routing without a netlist. 2. Edit footprints in place. You can now right click on a part to edit its footp rint and have that change immediately be reflected on your board (even all insta nces of that footprint if you desire). 3. Online help. With this release we are introducing a new online help system th at will grow virtually everyday. 4. Improved printing. Print Artwork mimics what your board will look like. 5. Adjustable global spacing. DRC spacing used to be set to our minimum manufact uring requirements (adjusted for copper thickness). You can now specify what yo u want your DRC spacing to be down to 5 mils (.005 inches). 6. Line width can now be adjusted down to 5 mils too. 7. More accurate picking around vias. 8. Insertion of text is much easier. 9. Many annoying bugs and quirks have been eliminated.

Changes from release 2.0.0.4609 to 2.0.0.4677 07/30/04 Over 150 user submitted issues have been resolved with this release --------------------------------This is a general maintenance release that fixes the following: ---------------------------------

1. Unused nets are not saved in a design once written to disk. The nets have to be completely empty for them to be purged. If you create unused nets in any one session, they will be available for the duration of the session. 2. When searching for a footprint in the Add Component dialog, you now have to e nter your search string and click on Go (or hit Enter) for a search to be initia ted. This speeds overall response time from the old Filter-As-You-Type method an d simplifies things for novices to PCB123. 3. Pin Properties now work as expected. You can assign/reassign the net attribut e of a pin without confusion. 4. There is a new, native netlist format that is emitted in Reports. This is a h uman readable partlist-netlist format that the system can also read in. 5. The Escape key (Esc) will trigger a screen refresh in addition to canceling m odes. 6. Ending traces on the wrong layer of a SMD device is now prevented and a check is performed for that situation when running a Design Rule Check. 7. Goto from Object hierarchy now works correctly for traces and even entire net s. 8. It is now impossible (as best as we can tell) to create duplicate net names.

Changes from release 2.0.0.4489 to 2.0.0.4609 07/23/04 --------------------------------This is a general maintenance release that fixes the following: --------------------------------1. Fixes a few frequent and annoying bugs while moving/editing components. 2. Fixes registry entry issue for power users that cause a crash after install o r during a save as . Changes from release 2.0.0.4380 to 2.0.0.4489 07/02/04 --------------------------------This is a general maintenance release that fixes the following: --------------------------------1. There where a whole group of crashes attributed to the real-time DRC markers. There was nothing wrong with the DRC engine itself just the management of the display markers in particular the removing of already removed markers 2. When performing fixups upon file load from older version databases. It was p ossible that nets assigned to power planes were not fully regenerated if certain changes were enacted upon them. This was easily fixed by temporarily unassignin g them from the power plane and then optimizing the nets, but is now done automa tically and correctly. The vast majority of crashes as we detect them are fixed by item #1. ---------------------------------

Known Issues --------------------------------The following issues are in the process of being fixed and will be available sho rtly. 1. The autorouter will choke on a zero-length connection. This can happen when t here is a connection going from one surface mount pin to another that are on dif ferent sides of the board. 2. There is an inaccuracy in the silkscreen-over-solderable rcs and circles may result in phantom DRC warnings. surfaces DRC check. A

These should be simple fixes but are not important enough to hold up this releas e.

Changes from release 2.0.0.3520 to 2.0.0.4380 ---------------------------------Enhancements: ---------------------------------1. Added Real Time DRC during manual routing. 2. Software now associates *.123 file with the PCB123.exe layout application. 3. Added library manager. (Ability to copy, paste, move and delete footprints am ong all libraries) 4. Added Keyboard accelerator map in to the Help menu. 5. Added Ctrl+F key accelerator, will allow you to snap a named object to your c ursor (i.e. U1, R12) 6. Added ECO Process (Engineering Change Order) Existing layout designs can now be compared and updated against an updated Schematic netlist. 7. Added Copy/Paste functionality to the library footprint editor - Pasted pins will duplicate arrangement, but sequential ordering may not match. 8. File/Open dialog now remembers previously used folder location. 9. Added the ability to generate an HTML Catalog of selected libraries. 10. Multiple selected objects can now be moved at the same time in the footprint editor. 11. Pin properties will no longer allow a pad size that is smaller than the dril l size plus a minimum required annular ring of 8 mils (0.008"). 12. Modified grid to a single entry instead of multiple entries, you can still e nter a variable grid if needed i.e. (.025,.050) 13. You can now delete objects from the project panel by selecting the object an d right clicking and selecting delete 14. Many visual improvements have been made to the painting routines.

15. Multiple dialogs cleaned and simplified.

---------------------------------Bug Fixes: ---------------------------------1. No-drill (SMD) pads will remain visible when moved in the footprint editor. 2. Changes to the grid setting are now instantly updated, no longer requires tha t an object be selected first. 3. Net length now shows only 4 digit decimal accuracy and the leading whole numb er portion is no longer obscured. 4. New Package and Load Package selections no longer appear in the File menu of the library footprint editor. 5. If an attempt is made to open a non-existent file from the Recent File list t he application will remain open and issue a message stating the file does not ex ist instead of crashing. 6. Reference designator text for bottom side component no longer moves to the to p layer silkscreen when the component is rotated. 7. Routing priority has been disabled in this release. 8. Only relevant layers are listed in the drop-down list when changing polygon p roperties. 9. M Key (accelerator) measurement tool no longer obstructs view and works corre ctly in the part editor. 10. Minimum viewable grid is now limited to prevent a potential slow down at lo w zoom levels 11. Added the ROBOEX32.DLL to the install path for the schematic help system. 12. Fixed the DRC engine's accuracy when reporting silkscreen on solderable surf aces. 13. Multiple small crashes have been fixed.

Changes from release 2.0.0.2865 to 2.0.0.3520 ---------------------------------Enhancements: ---------------------------------1. Added Tango netlist import. 2. Added Protel netlist import.

3. Can now unroute entire net, not just point-to-point connections. 4. Added some statistics to the library browser. 5. Line widths can now be controlled at the net level, track level, and segment level. Use the W key while drawing will allow you to quickly change widths. 6. After running a DRC, you can press the 'N' key to go to the next error. In th is way, you can cycle through all the errors and it will run another DRC at the end of the list. 7. Added a fanout router for automatically escaping surface mount parts. It's no t working yet for BGA devices. Only SMT pins with nets are eligible for fan out. This is accessible from the Design Menu. 8. Added a manual Fanout. Just right click when routing and select Fanout Via, o r press the V key. (Only works while routing) If the net is assigned to a plane the via will automatically get e thermal relief. 9. Added a via reduction pass to the autorouter. 10. The autorouter works on a finer grid now resulting in a greater completion p ercentage and fewer DRC errors. 11. Libraries can now be placed in subdirectories and these subdirectories can t hen be filtered in the part browser. When you save a new or existing part the di alog will default to Custom/Custom.slb.

---------------------------------Bug Fixes: ---------------------------------1. Fixed printing bug with white objects. 2. DRC now reports unrouted connections as an error. 3. Grid is now broken out as Routing Grid, Place grid, and Display Grid. All are Explicitly set in the Grid Dialog. 4. The router now displays a "To Go" count that ticks down to zero as the router completes attempts in lower toolbar. 5. Print now properly outputs square/rectangular pads. 6. Fixed crash when deleting multiple components. 7. Fixed crash when minimizing net lengths of nets with ring connections. 8. Fixed a DRC problem with degenerate oblong pads (round instead of oblong) 9. The database now allows footprints and components to have multiple pins with the same name as long as the name is empty. (Un-named pins) 10. Fixed the scrollbar thumb tracking. 11. Fixed printing issue with reference designators. 12. Reference designators now move properly under all component rotations and mi rroring.

13. Connectivity through plane layers has been fixed. 14. The DRC error markers don't obscure the error they are reporting. 15. Many painting glitches fixed. 16. Routed segments of plane-connected tracks are now pickable.