alternatives to EAGLE cad?

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They don't put them on their web site because of currency fluctuations. The US distributor, Advanced Circuits, used to have prices in $, but they seem to have disappeared. It starts at about $2,000, IIRC.

I use Pulsonix, and formed this support group:

Have a look at Easy-PC:

It's from the same parent company as Pulsonix, and shares many of the same features. It's aimed more at the hobbyist and educational market.

Leon

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I just spoke to Pulsonix. It actually starts at =A31750 GBP, which is more like $3,000.

Leon

So Leon, what do I get for that price?

-Dave Pollum

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Have a look at the web site:

It competes with products like PADS and Altium that cost twice as much, has much better support and is much easier to use. It even has some features that I don't think they have, like RF track mitres for microwave design and track following. It also imports designs and libraries from all the other major packages.

Leon

Heh. Doesn't even sound like you've encoutered their lock-you-out-of-your-own-work-product DRM yet.

*-*-website+reuse+paying.*+*-I-will-switch+cracked-*+*.would.not.help.*+zzz+after-*-*-version-*+copied+*.*.unlock.*.designs+*-*-*-*-exchange-*-*-*-*-third-party+reused+qq+*-*-single-bit-*-*-*-*+useless+*-*-*-projects-could-no-longer-be-opened

(I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with closed-source software of all stripes

--well, mostly the antics of the corporations.)

There's that too--though it's usually not a huge deal.

If you use Cadsoft's scripting capability, I don't think you will find a package much more time-efficient.

With all the acquisition / knife-the-baby activity in the ECAD industry, I'm not confident that ANY current payware offering will still be available/supported 2 years from now.

Depending on your needs, there are several GPL'd offerings:

(Often called *Windoze-hostile*

--though there _are_ folks using it under Windoze.)

(Requires seperate capture app[1]) (Requires seperate capture app[1])

Even if there are time-efficiency gains, for several weeks learning the interface/quirks of a new app will eat those up. . . [1] LTspice produces compatible netlists.

[...]

Been there. After the acqusition OrCAD has IMHO never achieved the robustness of the old SDT version :-(

So I switched to Eagle but my hopes that V5 would finally bring a hierarchical sheet structure have been dashed. Didn't happen. That is IMHO a huge shortcoming of this CAD software. So I am looking as well. Again.

I just installed gEDA inside a Sun VirtualBox engine. Haven't had much time to kick the tires yet but all the things I did try with gschem made me like it more and more. Just don't bet on too many corporate users. Then again that's the case with most CAD systems. The chance for a consultant like me to encounter a client who uses the same CAD are pretty slim although it did happen on occasion.

LTSpice is one of them best things that could have happened to us since the invention of sliced bread but the schematic capture part of it is, ahem, a bit rough. My design last week contains >580 parts. I can't imagine doing something like that with LTSpice.

--
Regards, Joerg

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