What is the bitmap to component converter?

[BobZ]

Windows listed this program as “recently added” although I did add this explicitly. What is it supposed to do?

[Rene_Poschl]

It converts a picture (bitmap) into either a symbol or footprint.

[BobZ]

Thanks Rene.

So what is the main purpose? Is this mostly for reverse engineering?

I had a quick look at my hard drive to try a simple image…came up with this. If the converter can do anything with this it would be interesting…

[Rene_Poschl]

One purpose is to get a company logo onto the schematic or pcb.

[BobZ]

Thanks. With Win10 launching it directly, it was out of context. I was thinking of taking a schematic image or pcb image, but I guess it makes more sense as a symbol or component image.

But to finish the exercise I am trying to pull the image into my schematic. BTW I first saw this as a magazine clipping on the bulletin board of my high school chemistry class in about 1968. I saw it 2-3 times a week, I always liked it, and I remembered it. (This shows you where my priorities are.) It is called “Why Rectabular Excrusions Won’t Transmogrify”. 1-2 years ago I was able to find it on the web.

OK I could place the image directly easily, and finally figured out how to place it as a symbol. But the symbol was way too big…

[der.ule]

You need to play with the DPI values, in general, bigger values give you smaller images. (the size in mm is also shown when you change the values, so there is that too)

[eelik]

Even though this doesn’t add information to the discussion… LOL for that picture.

[dchisholm]

@BobZ

. . . BTW I first saw this as a magazine clipping on the bulletin board of my high school chemistry class in about 1968. I saw it 2-3 times a week, I always liked it, and I remembered it. (This shows you where my priorities are.) It is called “Why Rectabular Excrusions Won’t Transmogrify”. . . .

That was old when I was young! It was passed around among guys in 7th grade drafting class, in 1963 - 64. Years later, I found a copy my father had done as an exercise in HIS mechanical drawing class, circa late 1930’s. I’ll bet there’s a copy among the archived drawings for the Pyramids . . .

Dale

[BobZ]

@der.ule

You need to play with the DPI values, in general, bigger values give you smaller images. (the size in mm is also shown when you change the values, so there is that too)

So these DPI values are adjusted in the component converter; or must use another image editor? I have several different image editing utilities, besides those that come with Windows10.

@dchisholm

I found a copy my father had done as an exercise in HIS mechanical drawing class, circa late 1930’s.

Gosh it is older than I thought! I suspect that the name has probably changed over the years, or perhaps was added later. Without looking at it I have been able to sketch the two larger pieces but those hex nuts have me baffled.

[dchisholm]

@BobZ

. . . Gosh it is older than I thought! I suspect that the name has probably changed over the years, or perhaps was added later . . . .

Seed a search engine with “blivet”. It’s also easy to click up a copy of the cover from “Mad” magazine’s March 1965 issue.

Dale

[der.ule]

You do that directly on the tool, changing the “Resolution” to a higher value, changes the “Size” in mm

Here are some examples of the same image changing the “Resolution” (72dpi, 500dpi, 1500dpi, 2500dpi) to get different sizes, I put some footprints as references (SOT-23, R_1206 and TO-220, the usual suspects)

Cheers

[SembazuruCDE]

As @der.ule says, you specify DPI Resolution in the conversion window. This tells the converter how many pixels represent an inch in the drawing. So, if you have a logo that is (for the sake of easy math) 100x100 pixels in size and you want your logo to only take half an inch square on your board (I’m not doing metric to imperial conversions here, again just to make the math easy on myself) then in the converter you specify 200x200 dpi. The converter either ignores any DPI values in the source bitmap’s meta data, or uses it to seed the Resolution fields in the conversion window. (I haven’t used the tool in so long that I don’t remember if it always comes in with a particular value or it it pulls the value from the source image. The last time I needed to use that tool it still had the bug that put the lines on the left and bottom side…)

[BobZ]

@der.ule

You do that directly on the tool, changing the “Resolution” to a higher value, changes the “Size” in mm

Thanks: FYI I am using a very recent nightly build and the converter does not explicitly show resolution (I think I prefer that it did.) Here is a screen shot:

So.none of us want to have bugs in our designs. Perhaps birds would work better. What a tweet thought.

@dchisholm

It’s also easy to click up a copy of the cover from “Mad” magazine’s March 1965 issue.

That is excellent. I did not know that Alfred E Neuman was a draftsman. But no hex nuts!

[bdh]

The converter outputs on 4 different selectable layers, none of which I need. I want to put it on the F.cu layer. Is there a way to do that?

bdh

[Rene_Poschl]

I don’t think the converter outputs to copper as the things it creates would not be supported by DRC.

Depending on what you intent to make you might want to look at freecad stepup (if you want to make complex precise shapes on copper for example to implement antennas, buttons, sensors, …) See Kicad StepUp: The Sketcher for Footprint generation

If your task is to make something artistic and you have your source material as a vector drawing then you might want to take a look at svg2shenzen

[pedro]

@bdh

I want to put it on the F.cu layer. Is there a way to do that?

Yes. Do the usual conversion to, for example, F_SilkS.
Then open the footprint with either the footprint editor or a text editor and change the layer to F_Cu. If the complexity of the picture is big, then the text editor solution works much better.

[bdh]

Thank you, Pedro. That worked perfectly!

Bruce

[bdh]

Hi Rene - FYI After using Pedro’s method below, I ran DRC and it ignored the logo.

Bruce