Categories
Beta

Try out the new Logicly 1.7 public beta

It’s been long-requested, and it’s finally here! Logicly 1.7 Beta allows you to open multiple documents at the same time. Feel free to open many windows side by side, and you can even copy and paste among them. That includes copying and pasting custom itegrated circuits, by the way — they’ll transfer seamlessly!

logicly-multiple-documents

As you can imagine, supporting multiple open documents required some significant archtectecture changes under the hood. With that in mind, please consider this build of Logicly beta quality. You’ve been warned: there may be bugs. If you find any issues, please don’t hesitate to submit a bug report!

Download Logicly 1.7 Beta

This build is not available from the normal Check for Updates mechanism in Logicly. It is only available for download from logic.ly/beta. Once I’m sure that everything is stable, I’ll release an official update for everyone. If you’re feeling adventurous, give the beta a try. If you’d rather avoid any possible new bugs, please wait for a stable build of Logicly 1.7 in the coming weeks.

I’m looking forward to your feedback!

Categories
Announcements

Logicly 1.6.0: Tri-State Buffer and Bus

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:

mux

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!

Categories
Announcements

Logicly 1.5.0: Integrated Circuit Libraries

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.

export-library

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

Categories
Announcements

Logicly 1.4 comes with a little Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+P

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.

Screenshot of Logicly Edit menu with Undo and Redo

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.

Categories
Announcements

Download the Logicly 1.3.2 Update

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!

Categories
Announcements

Out of Beta: Logicly 1.3.1

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.

Categories
Beta

Try the new features in Logicly 1.3.0 Beta

Edit: A big thanks to all the beta testers who sent in bug reports. The beta period is now over, so please Download Logicly 1.3.1 today.

Starting with version 1.3.0 of Logicly, each update will be made available for a short time as a public beta. Please consider downloading it early and providing feedback. In particular, please file bug reports for anything I might have missed during testing. As far as I know, everything is stable, but I’d rather limit any issues to a few brave beta testers before I push something out to everyone. Thank you, everyone.

Download Logicly 1.3 Beta

What’s new in 1.3? As always, your feature requests steer the direction of Logicly’s development.

  • Rotate multiple selected objects. You’re no longer limited to just one for rotation. A whole group will rotate around its center.
  • Add points to connections. Right click on a wire and choose Add Point, or simply click the middle of a wire and drag. You can drag the point anywhere you want, and it will snap to other points on the wire. This can be used to create straight wires and 90-degree turns.

    In the future, I may add the ability to snap to points anywhere in the document. If you think that’s important, or even if the feature is good enough as-is, please let me know.

  • Deleting connections has changed. Before, you simply needed to click on a wire with your mouse, but wires are now selectable. You can use the Delete button on the toolbar, choose it from the context menu, or simply press the Delete key on your keyboard.
  • Document-specific settings. There’s only one for now, but it’s one that was sorely needed. Previously, we had Default Float Signal global setting that allowed you to set the default value for an unconnected input. It is Unknown by default, since a real circuit may be unpredictable, but I know a lot of people like setting it to High/True instead. If people with different global settings share documents, this can lead to unexpected behavior. Now, this setting applies to each document individually so that all documents behave as the original author intended. The global setting still exists as a convenient default for new documents. Changing the global setting does not affect the currently open document.
  • Create Integrated Circuits from a selection. Have you always wanted to make a reusable component? Now you can. To define inputs and outputs, Toggle Switches and Light Bulbs now support an Export Name property. When you select a group of objects and choose Create Integrated Circuit on the context menu, Edit menu, or from the toolbar, you’ll get a new window to name your circuit and to define where the inputs and outputs are located. You can drag and drop inputs and outputs to the left, right, top, or bottom of the symbol in any order. Once created, your new custom circuit will appear in the “Custom” category at the bottom of the list of components in the main window.

    I’ve worked on adding pieces of this feature for years. The flip-flops initially added the ability to simulate a complex circuit behind a single skin. The ability to change the number of inputs on some of the logic gates was meant to eventually become a part of custom circuits. Combine that feature with the ability to change between IEC and ANSI skins for logic gates, and I finally put together a flexible skinning system that could work with a variety of components. After those three major parts were in place, it became a lot easier to see how they needed to be combined, and now you can play with the first iteration in 1.3.

    Currently, this feature still has some limitations. For instance, once you create a circuit, you cannot view its contents. It becomes a black box. This is only temporary, and I plan to add drill-down into circuits in a future version. You can’t export a single custom circuit to a file and then import it into a different document. This will be important for sharing custom circuits, but it’s not quite ready yet. However, you can copy and paste custom circuits between documents, so sharing isn’t impossible. Maybe just a little cumbersome. Again, this is something I already intend to address later.

  • 1.3 also includes minor bug fixes and polish, as always.
  • Finally, please note that the documentation has not been updated yet. Check out the beta documentation for more details about the new features. If you have any questions, or if you aren’t sure how something works, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Ready to try out all this cool new stuff? Download Logicly 1.3 Beta now. If you find any issues, or if you have some feedback about the new features, please don’t hesitate to drop a note or file bug reports. If there aren’t any major bugs, this version of 1.3 will be pushed live as a full update soon.

Categories
Announcements

Recommended Update: Logicly 1.2.1

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.
Download Logicly 1.2.1 Now

 

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.

Categories
Announcements

Logicly 1.2 improves performance

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.

Categories
Announcements

Logicly 1.1 offers IEC symbols and 3+ inputs on logic gates

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.

Screenshot of Logicly IEC Skins

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.

Screenshot of logic gates with three or more inputs in Logicly

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.