Core concepts

Circuit Painter works by drawing objects onto PCB layers.

PCB layers

There are a lot of layers that make up a PCB! Fortunately, we only need to focus on a few of them:

• Edge cuts

• Top silkscreen

• Top soldermask

• Top copper

• Bottom copper

• Bottom soldermask

• Bottom silkscreen

In Circuit Painter, you set the active drawing layer by calling the layer() function:

painter.layer('F_Cu')

Any objects created afterwards will be drawn on that layer, until it is updated by another layer() call. Note that some objects, particularly the conductive ones, can only be placed on a copper layer.

Taxonomy of objects

Circuit Painter allows you to create two categories of objects- conductive, and non-conductive. Conductive objects are used to carry electricity, and are assigned to ‘nets’. Non-conductive objects are used for making graphics, markings, and defining the board outline.

Conductive:

• Tracks

• Arc Tracks

• Polygons

• Footprints

• Vias

Non-Conductive:

• Lines

• Arcs

• Cirles

• Polygons

• Rect

• Text

Object attribues

Many objects have attributes that need to be set when calling them. For example, the width of a line or track is set by the width() function.

Global attributes are:

• width

• fill / no fill

• layer

• designators / no designators

Drawing coordinates

Circuit Painter features a virtual transformation matrix, to make scripting similar arrangements of objects anywhere on a board. It supports both linear and rotational transformations for all objects, allowing for example LEDs to be aligned around a circle.