PCB Comparer

Old-old Windows tool for PCB re-engineering: synchronous viewer of both PCB sides (and .sch and .net files creation and export)

EN user manual: poor EN user manual (very old)

Download: pcbcomparer_v2.zip (online antivirus checked)

Donates are welcome

  1. Scan (shoot) both sides of a PCB
  2. Edit photos to have the same size, scale: mirror one photo left-to-right, usually bottom side
  3. Create project in «PCB comparer»: load both photos
  4. Mark soldered pins (or SMD pads): double click
  5. Move created pins: CTRL + mouse click and drag over the pin
  6. Read (or invent) the name for each PCB component, create all pins\pads of it
  7. Set net name for each pins\pads set that are connected into a singe shared net (by copper traces)
  8. Result export: select each component designator (component name in the sch library) of the scheme (.sch) and footprint on PCB (component name in the PCB library)
  9. Results:
    1. .sch file: circuit diagram (scheme) of the components without net connections
    2. .net file — net list, list of the components, their pins and nets names between them
  10. Protel (Altium) CAD:
    1. Create project, add .sch file
    2. Maybe now in the latest CAD versions it’s possible to load .net file into the .sch directly, but old way — see below
    3. Create a new PCB and pass the info to PCB from SCH: synchronization will create the PCB components
    4. Load .net file into .pcb
    5. Make back synchronization: pass the net info from PCB into the SCH — reverse engineering is DONE !
    6. Next manual edition (of SCH and PCB) inside CAD software is possible as you like.

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