Logic.ly Blog

One component that Logicly users have long requested is a tri-state buffer. I’m very happy to announce that Logicly 1.6.0 finally adds support for tri-state buffers, buses, and a high impedance (or hi-Z) signal. In the screenshot below, you can see a multiplexor built with the new components:

The new Tri-State component will act like a normal Buffer when its enable input is High (true), passing on its other input value unchanged. However, if it’s enable input is Low (false), the Tri-State component will output the new hi-Z signal. This is a special signal that is meant to be used with a Bus, the other new component added to Logicly in version 1.6.0.

The new Bus component allows you to combine multiple connections together into one. When a Bus component receives a hi-Z signal in one of its inputs, it will ignore that input completely. The ideal situation is that all but one input to a Bus will recieve a hi-Z signal and the final input will have a High (true) or Low (false) value that will be passed on to the output. When using a Bus, you will need to be careful about sending it conflicting signals. If it receives both High (true) and Low (false) signals at the same time, the Bus will output an Unknown signal to signify an error. Watch out for propagation delays! Adding in Buffers can be useful for ensuring that all inputs to a Bus will updated at the same time. When other components, such as logic gates, receive a hi-Z signal to any of their inputs, they will also treat it as an error and output an Unknown signal.

As always, this release includes a various bug fixes and other minor enhancements too. Enjoy, and update to Logicly 1.6.0 today!

With Logicly 1.5.0, you can now export your document’s integrated circuits to a file and import them into other documents easily. Just look for the new import and export items in the File menu. This update makes the ability to share ICs across documents much more discoverable, and it improves the workflow greatly when you want to share your ICs with other people.

As always, this release includes various performance enhancements and bug fixes. Update to Logicly 1.5.0 today!

The latest update for Logicly comes with a little polish to make workflows nice and shiny. First, I’ve added undo and redo. Make a mistake, and it’s nice and easy to recover. Second, you can now print your documents. I’m sure that should help some of you instructors out there who would like students to hand in a hard copy.

Download Logicly 1.4

A number of minor issues were fixed as well, so everyone is encouraged to update. Enjoy! Keep up to date with the latest Logicly news with Logicly on Facebook or Logicly on Twitter.

Hot on the heels of Logicly 1.3.1 is the new 1.3.2 release, ready for download immediately. I’ll make this quick since not too much has changed, but it combines both an important bugfix and a very useful, brand new feature.

First of all, a helpful user discovered that the new ability to add points to wires doesn’t properly initialize when opening a saved document or copying between documents. The points would all end up on the top left of the document, which isn’t very useful. This issue is now fixed.

Secondly, you now have the ability to view the internals of a custom integrated circuit. Simply right-click on the custom circuit in the object picker on the left of the main window, and choose View Integrated Circuit… from the context menu or double-click a circuit on the editing surface. This will bring up a new view that lets you see what’s going on behind the scenes. If your integrated circuit contains other integrated circuits, you can continue to double-click to drill-down further.

Download the new update, and enjoy!

Last month, I made Logicly 1.3 available as a public beta. After some great feedback from the community, I fixed some bugs and added the final bit of polish. Today, you can download Logicly version 1.3.1, which includes all the great features mentioned in the beta announcement.

Download Logicly 1.3.1

In particular, a couple of new features are worth mentioning again. The first one is the ability to add points to wires and snap them into straight 90 degree angles. I first posted a preview of this feature on the Logicly Facebook page a couple months ago, and folks were pretty excited about it. I know a lot of you have been asking for this one for a while, and I’m glad I finally took the time to figure out how to do it.

The other big one is the ability to create a reusable integrated circuit, or to package up a part of your document into a black box, similar to the flip-flops. Everyone has wanted this one for years, including me, and I’m so happy to finally share the first iteration.

Expect the integrated circuits feature to be improved in upcoming versions of Logicly. What’s available in 1.3 is a great start, but I intend to add much more in the future.

Thank you very much to the helpful beta testers who reported bugs and provided awesome feedback. I hope that you’ll continue to test future betas as they become available. To everyone else waiting for the final release, please point your browser to the Logicly download page or go to the Help menu and choose Check for Updates. If you’ve been playing with the demo, and you like what you see, maybe now is the perfect time to buy Logicly.

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.

Update your install of Logicly to version 1.2 to take advantage of some performance improvements. The projects you all are sharing with me are getting bigger and bigger, and I’m happy to say that the bar just got pushed a little further. Keep creating those impressive circuits, everyone. In addition to performance improvements, a couple other nice additions and some bug fixes made it into this release:

• Improved the editing surface rendering performance. That means more gates, so make those projects bigger!
• If a file is very large and takes a second or more to open, a progress bar will be displayed.
• You can now drag a .logicly file into the main window, and it will replace the current document.
• Fixed an issue where an AND gate (and anything else using the and logic function) would sometimes fail to provide a correct false value if the number of input gates was greater than two and the and of the first two inputs evaluated to undefined.
• Fixed the centering of pasted objects when the editing surface is zoomed and panned.

Your installation of Logicly should ask to update automatically from time to time, and you will receive 1.2 in the next cycle. If you don’t want to wait, just open to the Help menu and select Check for Updates… to manually download and install the new version.

If you don’t already have a Logicly license, please offer your support and purchase Logicly, staring at $29 for one user. If you’re an instructor or teacher, be sure to consider a Volume Pack for your computer lab. Volume Packs support multiple users at a discounted price.

In the 1.1 release of Logicly, you’ll find two useful new features that many have requested. First, logic gates symbols from the IEC standard are now available. I know many prefer this style over the ANSI/IEEE “distinctive” symbols that Logicly offers by default. Just open up the Settings window, and you can find “Symbol Style” in the Appearance section.

I’ve also added the ability to create logic gates with more than two inputs. If you’ve been following Logicly on Facebook and Twitter, you probably already knew this feature has been in development because I asked for some advice about how many inputs everyone might expect to need. Based on your answers, I decided on a maximum of eight inputs, but I’m certainly willing to adjust that amount if you can suggest good uses for more than eight.

Your installation of Logicly should ask to update automatically from time to time, and you will receive 1.1 in the next cycle. If you don’t want to wait, just open to the Help menu and select Check for Updates… to manually download and install the new version.

If you think Logicly is a useful tool, and you enjoy seeing new features like these, please offer your support and purchase Logicly for $29. Thank you.