Affordable PCB Layout Software ???

Cadsoft: EAGLE

For free > Um ... has there been some kind of conspiracy at work over

KiCAD: free, open source

In this BOOK

see the "PCB Design CAD" page

Emanuele

Yeah, although many of them still work OK under Windows XP if you can find a copy.

Beside Eagle and KiCAD that others mentioned, gEDA is the "heavyweight" of

100% free schematic capture/PCB layout software. Probably doesn't fit your "good features with intuitive no-BS interfaces," but you might check it out anyway (it's more "tons of features, interface requires a fair learning curve, it won't necessarily be easy, but it does get the job done...").

Pulsonix has been slowly upping their prices as they've added features, but their "performance per dollar" ratio is still quite good -- certainly many times that of something like OrCAD. (Although some of their "upping the price" apparently has to do with the weakness of the U.S. dollar...)

This topic comes up regularly here (and on sci.electronics.cad) -- if you search the archives you'll find long threads discussing the various packages, pricing, etc.

Some of them (e.g., Advanced Circuits) will give or sell you the regular Gerber files after you've placed an order through them.

Many packages let you import files from other packages, although it's often a less-than-perfect translation based on the differing feature sets in each package (and just bugs in the code that does the import).

Schematic capture/PCB layout is a nichey enough market that I think it's rather difficult to make a living if you're selling the software for a couple hundred bucks. You do have the occasional individual and small company (e.g., Eaglesoft) that's noticeably more efficient than most and can do so, but if you just round up a bunch of average programmers these days and ask them to write EDA tools it's not surprising to me what sorts of prices you get by the time they're done.

My only comment here is that "intuitive" is somewhat subjective and "miniscule component libraries" might actually be a plus -- in most cases you'd want to build your own component library anyway. :-)

---Joel

EasyPC:

Leon

I've done several boards with Sprint-Layout 5.0.

39 Euros, download and go.

(sPlan, their schematic editor, is available for the same price, but I haven't used it.)

I like Sprint-Layout quite a lot. Particularly, I find the menus and functions clear, fast, and logical. It's compact, and easy to make footprints, outputs Gerbers, etc. Control of trace widths and pads is wonderfully simple.

I've never had it hang or crash.

Its only failing so far is the pin-to-pin autorouter, which does crappy routings. Protel's EasyTrax did that very well, and I miss it, but hand-routing isn't difficult.

I love the rubber-banded wiring feature: quickly click in wires you plan to place and a blue trace appears to remind you to make each connection.

I mean to try gEDA some time, but this is what I use now.

HTH, James Arthur

Eaglesoft writes *flight simulator* software.

The company that produces the Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (acronym: EAGLE--all caps) is *Cadsoft*.

Oops! Thanks for the correction, Jeff. :-)

I didn't know it was an acronym before either.

---Joel

I've been using Orcad's PCB Editor formerly known as Allegro. I'd give i about a 7 out of 10 but have still never seen anything better.

One that is not as well known, but works very well is FreePCB at freepcb.com. I have used if for commercial boards including a very dense six layer mixed signal board which I going into production as we speak!

Rick

Looks nice, but how about importing netlists from other schematic editors?

--
Programmeren in Almere?
E-mail naar nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)

I usually use:

with gschem (from gEDA) for schematics.

-- HTH, Wojtek

Does it have schematic capture? If not, what brand of schematic capture works well with is?

--
Guy Macon

Hi,

I recommend the combination of KiCad and FreeRouting.net. It is an almost unbeatable combination.

KiCad is free as in beer and speech, runs on Windows and Linux. It has an interface to use FreeRouting.net for autorouting or manual routing of PCB traces.

I used KiCad and FreeRouting.net for my N8VEM SBC project. You can check out a sample on the Google Groups of the SBC PCB and ECB backplane PCB.

KiCad has large part library support and can import Eagle parts. It can import and export Specctra and GenCAD as well.

Try KiCad! You'll be happy you did!

Thanks and good luck!

Andrew Lynch

It is schematic capture agnostic. It only cares about the net list which should be PADS compatible, IIRC. I used Orcad with it and many users use TinyCad which is another open source program. I didn't find TinyCad suitable for my needs, but I am still looking... Orcad is ok, but I would prefer something open source.

Rick

I don't know. In fact, I'm not even sure either package supports netlists. I poked around the menus and help, but couldn't find "import."

That's not a drawback to me--I've been doing large layouts by hand since I was a kid--but you might find it so.

The OP said he wanted to do quickie boards and get fab files out. Sprint-Layout does that great, the .EXE is just 2MB, and it's flaming fast. I love that.

Please don't consider mine the last word on the netlist thing-- I really don't know.

Cheers, James Arthur

'Till your mention, hadn't come across it before. Just trying the demo'. Seems fast, no fluff. I really like the milling and HPGL stuff , though can't seem to find any library items.

The library is extensive, and super-easily accessed, extended, and modified: items pop up in a toolbar on the right-hand side of the screen.

Options-->Show Macro-Library.

(I'm not sure how much library you get with the demo.)

Oh, it's limited to four trace layers, if that's a problem for some. It's not for me. Large boards are fine, metric or english units, etc.

I've more than recouped my 39 euros just in the time saved learning the program and its ease of use -- it's logical and clean to where I've scarcely needed to check the help files. Just click the icons, and it does what I want. Fast.

It really is a sweet program.

Cheers, James Arthur

Give a try to Proteus

we have switched to it from more expensive packages a couple of years ago and we are delighted. Especially with the mixed signal VSM simulator of course but the PCB design suite has all the features we need even for quite complex RF designs.

Robert

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