Manual of Minimal Board Editor

About Minimal Board Editor

 Minimal Board Editor is a Print Circuit Board editor software, works on Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

 It is thought that software is better when there are a lot of functions. But Minimal Board Editor aims to design the print circuit boards with the minimal functions.

 This program is distributed under GPL2.

 I am using Visual Studio 2008 C# Standard edition to develop it. Perhaps, you can build it by Visual C# 2008 Express Edition too.
  

** IMPORTANT NOTICES **
This program outputs Gerber data. Even if you get an unexpected PCB, I do not assume any responsibility.
I recommend you to verify the CAM data before ordering the PCB.

Requirements

Minimal Board Editor need .NET Framework 2.0 or later.

Specification of Minimal Board Editor

• Standard user interface of Windows.
• Up to 300mm square board.
• Up to four copper layers.
• Supports positive gerber only for copper layers.
• Display unit is mm. You can use inch, mil or cm as the unit, when inputting sizes.
• 0.1um resolution.
• Filling
• No auto router
• Can not rotate objects with rbitrary angle. (Rotation angle is 90 degree step only)

Install

Beforehand, please install .NET Framework 2.0 or later.
(.NET Framework has already been installed in Windows Vista.)
You can get .NET Framework from Download Center of Microsoft's WEB site.


In the distribution package of Minimal Board Editor, the following files are necessary for execution.

• mbe\bin\Release\mbe.exe -- executable file
• mbe\bin\Release\toolmark.mb3 -- drill marks file for printing in TOOL-MARK mode.

Please make an appropriate folder, and copy these files in that.

Window

Window of Minimal Board Editor

Layer

Layer of Minimal Board Editor

Reference

I make the user interface of this program become to the Windows standard as much as possible.
But selection objects and moving objects may be little confusing.
I recommend you to see the Selector tool first.

Menu

File	Open/Save file. Export image file, CAM data, Netlist. Print, DRC Exit from this program.	Detail
Edit	Basic edit command (Copy/Cut/Paste/Delete) Change properties/layer of objects.	Detail
View	Change view mode.	Detail
Tool	Choose mode to place objects.	Detail
Set	Various Settings	Detail
Help	Version information

Context Menu

Add Node	Divide a line	Detail
Property	Refer to the detail of the Edit menu
Cut
Copy
Paste

others

Changing the tool with one key
Defining a shortcut-key
When you open the file of Minimal Board Editor with text editor, be careful to the character code.
Guideline of Drawing
Unit of inputting size
Where is a setting information of Minimal Board Editor?