555 Piano

Design the PCB

You're going to have a go at creating a PCB of your circuit.
First, you will need to open the circuit you designed from week 3. Make sure you delete the virtual multimeter.
Click the button that looks like this at the top of the workspace.
Click Next and then choose Rats Nest; No Placement or Routing and check the box for allowing customisation.

Next and Next again
For each of the PTM switches, you need to make sure you're choosing 10x10 switches. Double click the switch in the list and change it.

Now you can click through the remaining menus and convert your circuit to a PCB, this is done by clicking on next, until you get to finish.
You'll need to try and place the components so that the green connecting wires don't overlap. You might find it's easier to delete the rectangular board to begin with.
Once you are happy with the placement, try and connect up the components with tracks.
Here's an example, but try and design your own.
Please note: The potentiometer (variable resistor) looks different to the example below, but if you follow the green lines, you will be able to do it.

You're going to have a go at creating a case to house your instrument.
Here are some tips to help you:
The PCB is 20 mm by 150 mm and 2 mm thick.
You can use fly leads to extend the buttons, the speaker or potentiometer to increase the flexible of your design.
You either Solidworks or 2D Design to make your case.
You may need a pencil and paper sketch to get you started.
You need to think about the parts that are going to fit together to make your instrument.
Think about ergonomics, how are you going to play your 'sweet' tunes?

We're going to use Solidworks to design our instrument.
Hopefully you have already had lots of experience with Solidworks last year, so for this recap section of the project, you'll just be creating a couple of the Solidworks parts and assembling them.
In Solidworks you start by creating a 2D sketch. You can then convert this to a 3D part. You can then join parts together to make a 3D assembly.

In Solidworks you have to ensure all your drawings are fully defined.
This means that the software must know the dimensions of every line you draw.
Quite often the software is able to work out a dimension of a line, from others you have provided.
Video of building two parts of the case
Video of mating
Video of converting Solidworks to 2D Design for laser cutting