With a new school year running at cruising speed, Logicly has been helping students around the world more than ever. Thank you all for your support. I’m so happy that you’re enjoying working with Logicly. A new version with some of the most requested new features is in development right now, and I plan to release it before the end of the year. In the meantime, though, a couple important issues needed to be fixed immediately. All Logicly users should download Logicly 1.2.1 as soon as possible.
- This is a critical update for Mac OS X users that fixes an application crash on startup if Adobe AIR 3.0 is installed.
- Bug fix: An issue with the color pickers in the settings dialog could lead to the application entering an unrecoverable state. Affects all operating systems.
- Finally, the mechanism for update checking has changed. Future versions of Logicly may not be relying on the separate Adobe AIR runtime, so everyone should update to Logicly 1.2.1 to ensure that you are properly notified of new versions.
I hope students and instructors alike have a wonderful quarter or semester ahead. If you have questions, bug reports, feature requests, or anything else on your mind, please don’t hesitate to send over a note. If you love Logicly, and you’d like to support development, please consider purchasing Logicly for yourself or your students.
5 replies on “Recommended Update: Logicly 1.2.1”
Hello, first off I would like to say that I LOVE your software, it’s very intuitive and easy to use. It’s the BEST out there! I’ve been using it to learn a LOT about digital logic, and I don’t think I could have done it any other way.
However, there are a few features I would like to suggest. Features that, to me, would “finalize” your product and make it a much more justified potential purchase. These features are:
1) The ability to “Organize” your wires by essentially using invisible buffers to guide them to their destination. This would make demonstrating and designing circuits much easier as all the wires wouldn’t have to be bunched together, and could be spread across visually pleasing “highways”. Imagine a circuit board.
2) The ability to encapsulate previously built circuits to be used in other projects as a gate in itself. Like the flip-flops. One could build an 8-bit registry, select the input and output bits, and then save that as a gate to be used easily in a larger-scale project. The ability to combine multiple bits into a single “data bus” may prove useful as well. Built gates could then be used to create an even more complex gate, even an entire CPU. Double-clicking on such gates could even load the circuit in a smaller window, one could take apart complex circuitry piece-by-piece. Implementing this efficiently could prove difficult, but I’m sure you can figure something out.
3) The ability to increase the size of the 7-segment display. 4-32 bits ought to be enough. The number of actual 7-segment displays would grow as needed, and be treated as a single gate.
4) Virtual screens with selectable sizes (4×4 to 128×256 ought to be good) with several input methods. black and white would be enough.
5) The ability to watch the circuit function one step at a time.
6) Access to keyboard input as an 8-bit input within the scene. Possibly like yet another gate.
7) The ability to create a ROM gate with pre-loaded data from a file. Options for bit-width would be excellent. 4-16 bits should be ok.
This program could become a full-blown hardware simulator. I imagine MANY colleges and universities would love to have something like that. The potential for profit from such a program could prove immense. Theoretically, if all such features would be implemented, one could create an entire fully functioning machine, and could even run old-school programs! A machine within a machine… machinception.
PS: My inspiration for such ideas comes from http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/plan.html and the software that comes with it. I believe your product could be a replacement.
Sorry for the double post but I forgot to mention something. The encapsulated user-built gates could be shared online, something I’m sure strikes your interest.
Also, an iPad app would kick major ass, though that’s likely impossible because last I heard the iPad doesn’t support flash. 🙁
Adobe AIR can be used to make iPad apps. There’s no barrier there. However, there are big differences between mouse and touch input. I’m still figuring out the best way to do things like dragging wires around to form connections. The mouse is much more precise, so there are quirks when you go to touch.
That said, I’d love to complete an iPad version. It’s brewing, but slowly.
1) You will be able to add and drag points on wires in 1.3, with some basic snapping with other points on the wire. Try the beta and let me know what you think.
2) Again, check out 1.3 beta. It’s the first pass on encapsulating circuits, and I intend to improve this feature with more capabilities in future updates.
3) Noted.
4) This has been requested before, and I’ll certainly consider it for a future version.
5) This has been available since the beginning. Pause the simulation and choose “Advance Simulation One Step” from the Simulation menu or on the bottom left. You can also reset the simulation to return to the initial startup state (toggle switches have a Signal After Reset property that can be used with this).
6) Another person has suggested assigning keys to toggle switches and push buttons. When you press a key, the assigned control changes state.
7) This is probably outside the scope of Logicly, at least for the time being.