"Rheilly Phoull" writes:

Nelson wrote:
I don't know if anyone here has tried this before, but I thought I'd
mention it. I have found creating a circuit diagram from a PC board a
big PITA. Especially vexing is continually flipping the board over to
determine the connections. If you have ever tried, you know what I
mean.

Recently I found a way to make this problem a lot easier. First, take
a digital photo (close up, high resolution) of both sides of the
board. Then use an image editing program like Photoshop to flip the
trace side image to it's mirror image and remove everything but the
traces from the image. That's relatively easy because the board is
all green and the traces are all gray. Finally, paste that image as
an "alpha channel" with semi-transparency into the component side
image.

The result is a full color "x-ray" of the PCB showing the traces and
solder joints directly under the components. It takes a little
experimentation to get the transparency and alignment of the two
images just right but the result is worth it.

Then again a decent light underneath usually shows the traces.

But not where they go behind parts.

Of course, that's still a problem for double sided and more of a problem
for multilayer PCBs.

But I like his general approach.

In fact, I may go and try it as I have a single sided PCB to trace at the
very moment.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/
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