In this tutorial, I'll show you how to use the manual layout creator option in LEDEdit software to create a representation of the real LED layout for your LED programming requirements. I've discussed using LEDEdit's automated layout creator to create panel-like LED layouts. It's good most of the time, but we sometimes have to design LED displays with irregular shapes. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to design oddly shaped layouts using LEDEdit's Manual Layout Creator. This tutorial is for the “LEDEdit” software, not the “LEDEdit-K” software. In the future, I will include tutorials for those software versions.
Please read my first LEDEdit article [Click Here] before looking into this one.
I'll show you how to discuss several irregularly shaped layouts. First and foremost, you must create a new project. Please see the section on “Starting a New LEDEdit Project” in my previous tutorial.
Create Frame shaped LED Layout
1- In the top menu bar, select “Project Config” and then “Start Manual Layout“. This opens the manual layout design window.
2- Select “New” from the “File” menu. Type the desired worksheet size (the width and height of the workspace). This does not refer to the number of LEDs you are intending to use. This simply refers to the size of the work area. You may select whatever size you like, but it should not be less than the number of LEDs you plan to use. Use a work area that is three to six times the number of LEDs you want to use. First, create a layout plan on paper or in MS Paint. Here is my plan:
3- The method I'm going to use is the BMP method. Yes, it is possible to manually place LEDs one at a time, but it is time-consuming. I'm going to use Adobe Photoshop software to make things simple. Open Photoshop and select “New” from the “File” menu. Photoshop software should be downloaded and installed if you don't already have it.
4- Give the width and height text fields in the “New file” window the number of LEDs your plan has on each side; in my example, the width side has 40 LEDs and the height side has 30 LEDs. So, as shown in the image, I give 40 and 30 (W, H). After leaving the other options in the above image, click “OK“.
Pixel LED Effects Download Pack: 7000 Effects
5- To zoom the sheet, select the “Zoom Tool” from the toolbar, and then click anywhere on the sheet or the “Fit Screen” button. To activate the ruler, select “Rules” under “View” in the top main bar.
6- Click “Edit“, then “Preferences“, then “Units and Rulers“. Select pixels from the drop-down menu for both “Rulers” and “Type“, then click “OK“. Your ruler's display will now be in pixels. Consider each pixel to be a single LED.
7- Let us now make our frame. I'm going to make ruler guides before making the frame to make it simpler to make. Right-click and hold the vertical side ruler, then drag it towards the sheet until it reaches the 5-pixel point in the horizontal ruler, then release it. If you accidentally leave it in the wrong spot, click on that ruler guide, hold down your mouse button, and drag it to the right position.
Why did I select 5 pixels? Remember that 1 pixel equals 1 LED because I have 5 rows of LEDs.
I'm going to place more guides using the same method. Take a look at the photo above.
8- Select the “paint bucket” tool from the toolbar, followed by the color picker, black, and “OK“. To make the sheet black, click on it.
9- Select the “Rectangle Tool” from the toolbar, and you'll notice labels like “Fill” and “Stroke” in the top right corner. Select white from the palette for both “Fill” and “Stroke” by clicking the rectangle in front of them. To create the inner rectangle, click and hold the mouse button on any corner of the inner rectangle generated by the ruler guides, grab it toward the opposite corner, and release it (if you place it incorrectly, resize it). This is what it looks to be.
10- Select “Save As” from the “File” menu. Give any file name as the file name in the Save As menu, and select “BMP” from the Type drop-down list. and then select “Save As” from the “Saved” menu. Give any file name as the file name in the Save As menu, and select “BMP” from the Type drop-down list. and then click “Save“.
This opens the “BMP settings” panel. Maintain the previous settings and click “OK“. Close the Photoshop software. If it asked, “Would you want to save?” Select “OK” and a path to save the project file.
11- Return to your LEDEdit manual layout creator window and click “File” > “Import BMP“, then click “OK“, select the BMP file that we just made, and click “OK“. Place the layout anywhere you like in the work. It'll look somewhat like this:
12- All that remains is for us to connect the dots. You may link manually using the line tool, or we can connect automatically using the “Auto LX” tool. Click on the “Auto LX” tool icon in the top bar and select the method you wish to use to wire the LEDs. I'm going to use “Left Into” and then click “Close“.
13- Right-click and hold, then grab and release the mouse pointer so that the selection covers the whole layout.
Result:
Of course, this is not an acceptable wiring method. It's a waste of cables. I'm going to decrease wire usage by separating the layout into four areas, wiring each section independently using the “Auto LX” tool, then connecting each section with the line tool. Here is my plan.
Auto LX Tool
13-1 Use the “Auto LX” tool on each section separately. Click on the “Auto LX” tool and select the wiring way you wish to use, then select each section separately, one by one, as shown below:
To delete a connection, use the “Quick remove connection” tool, then select the section you want to delete by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer over the area containing the connections you wish to delete.
Note: I selected different wiring patterns for each section to place the wires in such a way that the wire ends of each section were near the wire ends of other sections. Making it simple to wire and saving a lot of wires.
14- We must now connect each section in a series. Click on “Line Tool” in the top bar and connect the ends of the first section with the second section, the second section with the third section, and the third section with the fourth section by clicking on one LED and then clicking on the other LED to make the connection. Make no connection between the fourth and first sections.
Connecting to the Port
15- We have completed the section connecting process. Now we must connect our layout to the port. Different controllers have different numbers of ports, and those ports have different maximum allowable LEDs. I used the T1000-B controller in my previous tutorial, which has one port and can connect to up to 2048 LEDs. We must create cases 1, OT 1, and RT 1. (in my case, layout 1). To create the port, click the port symbol in the top bar, then click beside your layout. If you need to alter the port number of the newly formed port, just double-click it and do so.
Select “Line Tool” and connect the port to Section 1's input line by clicking on the port and then the first LED in Section 1.
16- We are now finished with our layout. Click on “File” and select “Save“. Choose a path and give a name to the file, then click “OK“.
17- Return to the LEDEdit main window after closing the “Manual Layout Creator” window. Click “Project Config” and then “Import (.cxb)“; go to and select the file we just created; and then click “OK“. If you see an error message like “Import __ LED lights, Importing Failed 0 lights“, your layout was created and imported successfully. However, if the number of failed lights is greater than zero, you have poor connections.
Fixing the bad connections
The white LED identifies failed connection locations, indicating a problem with the connection at that place. Return to “Manual Layout Creator” by clicking “Project Config” in the top menu bar and choosing “Start Manual Layout“. Click “File” and then “Open” in the Manual Layout Creator window. Browse for and select the file we created, then click “OK“.
This will display our layout. Zoom in on the locations where connections have failed and reconnect them using the “Line tool” (it will be easy if you delete the connection in that area using the “Quick remove connection” tool as in step 13.1 and reconnect them using the “Line tool“). Save the file again after rebuilding the connections. To save the same file, go to “File” and click “Save“. Step 17 should be done again.
Continue from the subsection titled “Recording a Video or an Animation” in my previous tutorial to apply a video or an animation to our layout.
