FreePCB board designing-WTF is going on???

Hey, I started messing around the program called FreePCB yesterday since I want to design a prototype board for myself by modifying the existing project from here: http://www.retrohacker.info/pcb-cads/Wi ... dapter.zip

So first of all- how to import the damn things into the program??? I tried every route possible but none of them worked

So after that I tried using a program called GC-Prevue and I was successful in importing the project but here's the problem- WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO DAMN ANYTHING?? I want to swap a few traces but have no F clue how to do damn anything, clicked everything but NOTHING worked and I managed to do NOTHING for hours.... This is also brilliant there are no tutorials on the internet how to use these programs... Can anybody help?? Or will anybody do the job instead of me?? I know which traces should be swapped and where they should be connected. I guess that would be much easier than trying to educate me but I'd still rather want to know how to use them. I'd be so grateful. Big thanks in advance!!

Those are gerbers. Exports. You want whatever project file generated them. Those are meant to be sent to a PCB manufacturer. GerbView will let you take a look at them. I've never heard of GC-Prevue, but from the name, it looks like it's for previewing gerbers. Maybe some wonderful software exists to facilitate the editing of gerbers, but they aren't mean to be worked on.

I know Gerber files have nothing to do with Brandy O'Bannon mystery novels. But in this analogy, would a Gerber file be analogous to a PDF?

Yes. They're basically vector image files that are used by the manufacturing plants to actually create the PCB's from your design. There's no concept of "components" or "connections" it's just a single file per layer (top/bottom copper/soldermask/silkscreen) containing the shapes and dimensions of that particular layer. PDF is quite an apropos analogy in that trying to find a program to edit a gerber file exported out of a PCB editor is like trying to find an application to edit a PDF that you exported out of Microsoft Word, instead of just editing the original .doc(x) file.

So is there any editable project of that PCB?? If yes, can anybody share it??

Lay off the punctuation and calm down a bit. If you can view the gerbers, you should be able to re-create this yourself.

Yes but what's the point of doing it all over again if there is an existing project somewhere (if there are gerber files, it must be), but who has that??

Some peoples share their gerbers so that other can reproduce the PCB of their projects but don't want peoples to be able to mess around with the design so they just share what is needed for PCB fabbing and keep the project files private.

As I stated in my PM, I no longer have the project files.. but the adapter is so simple, that you can easily re-create my work based on the gerbers that I have posted.

FreePCB does not allow you to "import" gerbers.