Eagle vs Protel

Auto placement is unnecessary, and doesn't work well even in high-end versions, and makes ugly boards. People are better at this. Hell, people are better at routing.

John

Reply to
John Larkin
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I agree. I can't comment on the high end stuff, but AutoPlacement in Protel is worse than useless.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Stephens

If you use a bunch of FPGAs or RAMs, placement interacts with pin assignments and bussing strategies, and that's iterative. Then there are thermal/ground loop/isolation/pour/bypassing/impedance and lots of other issues. Software isn't any good at this. Besides, this part is fun.

We don't autoplace or autoroute anything, and I bet we come out ahead. The boards look better for sure.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

The Auto-placement "feature" was invented by the marketing department, and is not really useful in most (all?) PCB programs. I may have tried Protel's autoplacement once or twice, just for laughs, but have never used it for real work.

I haven't used Eagle myself, but would suggest that if another version of Eagle will do what you need, you should probably stick to that product line, to make use of your experience with Eagle Lite (assuming that user interface, file formats, etc. are consistent through the product line).

I'm a long-time Protel user, but haven't upgraded to the latest version - 99SE is still adequate for my work.

--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI  
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca  
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Reply to
Peter Bennett

Wilhelm, I have purchased a full-blown license of Eagle and have never regretted it.

I have also used Protel for one specific customer and it has about the same learning curve as Eagle does. You have to learn different things but there is a learning curve. I'm not a huge Protel user but what I have heard from others is that Protel constantly gets to a version that is just usable with lots of outstanding bugs and then the next version comes out that is not usuable due to a huge number of bugs. It just gets fixed to the point where its just usable and then a new one comes out.

I have never used auto-placement in previous places even when it was available. If you're happy with the auto-router and its performance then stick with Eagle. In my opinion its by far the best value for your money. I've used Protel, Orcad, CadStar, ViewLogic (or whatever they are called today), ...

Cheers,

James.

Reply to
James Morrison

I've been using Eagle lite freeware version for home projects for 5 years now, (at work we use Orcad), If you can get through Eagle's quirkiness its not bad. Heck go for it and send me a copy ;)

Reply to
maxfoo

Protel99SE wins hands-down. I've used both. Admittedly, Protel more--but Eagle has some features that I loathe. Like hard linking schematic to board. Yeah it's theoretically the right thing to do--but if something becomes amiss between the two files, you're sscrewed....

My $0.02 worth....

Don't know about later Protel versions. Understand they've gotten ridiculously $$$$.... So budget may be your primary concern.

Bo

Reply to
Bo

Hi,

I am up to the point where I must now purchase my PCB software because the complexity of the boards exceed the capabilities of Eagle Lite. (ie can only do double sided boards of limited size)

I see there are a few posts about Protel, and I was wondering if I can have some coments about the two. As to what I should invest in. (keeping in mind I know eagle quite well)

For starters Eagle don't have auto placement of components, but the auto router works great.

Rgs

Wilhelm

Reply to
Wilhelm Lehmann

Fun ? Well, not always ;)

But I completly agrees. Autoplacement is useless. If you did the schematics or at least have a good overview of what you're doing you should probably have a good view at how to dispose stuff correctly. I don't like autorouting either because I never really "like" what it produces, I just route everything by hand.

I never used protel but I use eagle for some times now and I like it. It has some limitations but with some scripts to help, you can do some nice stuff.

I'd say that if you uses eagle and you don't have major problems with it, keep it. Learning a new tool in depth can take sometime. And eagle is available for Win32/Linux x86/MacOS X ;)

Sylvain

Reply to
Sylvain Munaut

Wilhelm, a non commercial medium version of Eagle costs 150Euro. Protel costs 9995$. Did you know that?

--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy
Reply to
Ban

As everyone else has pointed out, autoplacement blows. I've never seen a situation where it produces useful results. That said, the feature is there for a reason and I suppose someone out there has a use for it.

Protel is a very good package and is no more or less clunky than any other PCB layout software. The UI is a bit more modern than its competitors and I found the learning curve to be a bit easier than Orcad and other packages.

However, Eagle is cheap. A license of Protel is something like an order of magnitude more than Eagle.

Something else to consider is that Protel and Orcad are pretty much the industry standard tools, depending on which part of the world you do business in. Unless you design motherboards or complex microwave stuff, one of those two packages is likely to be your tool of choice.

Chris

Reply to
kmaryan

My experience too - Protel is a tricky beast - you adapt to it, not vice versa. So if you have put in the hours to learn the Eagle quirks, stick to Eagle.

Roger Lascelles

Reply to
Roger Lascelles

Thanks guys,

I think eagle is then the way to go, and since I know it quite well and are very happy with it, it makes the choice just so much easier.

I never used an autoplacement, and based on the comments, I can't justify the higher expense and learning curve of Protel.

Eagle served me well, and works even on my small Linux box ....

Regards

Reply to
Wilhelm Lehmann

You get what you pay for. Look at the industry: Small - Eagle (hobby ???) Medium - Protel Large - Cadence

Reply to
The Real Andy

Used Eagle more than Protel98, but.... Don't like Protel at all, user interface is crap compared to Eagle.

Reply to
Pieter Kruger

Orcad is owned by Cadence now.

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

At least the high end FPGAs have lotsa routing resources these days. Designing the FPGA to make the board simple is the best way to at least start. If the FPGA gets strangled then push IOs around.

You haven't done complicated enough boards. ;-) I've seen many that couldn't be hand routed with 10x the personel. Boards measuring in the high-digit square feet, with fifty to a hundred layers, all packed to the gills. Only overflows (perhaps hundreds to thousands) were hand routed. Many of those overflows were done with surface wiring (twisted pair).

Chips aren't hand routed these days either, except when there is no other way to meet timing (BTDT-GTS). Do you hand place-n-route your FPGAs? Boards have been known to be just as complicated.

-- Keith

Reply to
keith

Hello Ban,

If Wilhelm wants to use it commercially it'll be $798 if you only buy schematic and layout and not the autorouter. I don't know the Euro prices. The autorouter is $399 in the US. That would be the professional edition, 16 signal layers, boards almost up to the size of a mattress, the works.

Ouch!

Regards, Joerg

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Reply to
Joerg

Hello Andy,

Err, not necessarily. Almost all my clients use OrCad, small, medium and large companies. I switched to Eagle when they started jacking up the prices. Except for the lack of hierarchical design I didn't find anything I'd miss from my OrCad days. Oh, and what bugs me a little is that Eagle uses "cut" where every other program says "copy". But that's a minor inconvenience, like having to drive in lefthand traffic.

I haven't seen Protel in a long time. Cadence I saw only once and that was a company that designs mostly CMOS chips, not boards.

Regards, Joerg

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Reply to
Joerg

Hello Chris,

In the western US I would think the de facto standard is OrCad. If Cadsoft would advertise more they could capture more market share.

Regards, Joerg

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Reply to
Joerg

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