A friend of mine uses Proteus where I used to work. It's full of bugs, but he manages to get round them and produce decent designs with a great deal of work. Sometimes he even has to get the PCB supplier to pre-process the Gerbers (expensive) , because he can't get it to produce the right shapes. Support is non-existent from the UK supplier. I tried using it once to modify a board while he was on holiday - just altering a few vias and tracks was a nightmare.
They got Eagle for everyone else but I refused to use it, and they let me use my own copy of Pulsonix after a big row with management. Doing anything in Eagle required about twice as many keystrokes and mouse operations as with Pulsonix, agravating my RSI problems. I got them to give in on Health and Safety grounds. 8-) It also kept crashing on me. One of the engineers who knew Eagle well spent two weeks laying out a PCB, I could have done it in one day with Pulsonix.
So wouldn't you also like to see a Pulsonix option whereby "auto weld" worked (1) when multiple components where being pasted and (2) for connecting pins to the middle of nets (rather than just the ends or other component pins as it does now)? :-) I spend a noticeable amount of time in Pulsonix copying and pasting something and then drawing a bunch of short wire segments hooking everything up; none of Protel, PCAD, and OrCAD require this.
Another nice time saver from OrCAD is "repeat paste" where it repeats the last paste command at the offset between the original component and where you first pasted it. Pulsonix does have the somewhat similar option to "copy matrix," but when you just need to repeat pasting a component some, say, 3-4 times it's more effort to set up than just manually pasting.
It might have something to do with the labor market. Labor rates in the US are quite high, so in a market where there isn't a whole lot of volume, product prices end up high as well. It is surprising to me that in a country like NZ -- which is a lot closer to China than the US is -- material goods such as PCs, power tools, etc. cost noticeably more than in the US, yet labor is a lot cheaper.
At this point, to some degree it's probably self-perpetuating... if you're in the US and think you're going to write some EDA software, you're probably immediately struck that your closest market (the US) is dominated by the high-end, high-cost package, and that's very difficult to compete with. The Internet has negated this to some extent, however.
Finally... there are a few low-end US vendors out there... or at least there were! Ivex (Winboard) was US, no? And there's AMS down in Florida... I used their software once, and it had some incredible limitations such as only allowing 10 different pad shapes (!), but it did get the job done at the time (a decade back -- these days freeware alternatives are far better).
"RST Engineering (jw)" a écrit dans le message de news: 2c2cc$44185c52$42512db5$ snipped-for-privacy@DIALUPUSA.NET...
Why what?
Why those non-US citizens are able to design and produce some good pieces of software without the help of the great USA? Are you suggesting this is not a "normal" situation? If yes, please think twice.
Hey, I didn't mean to start a fight. I simply noted that almost all of the medium to low range software was not only written outside the US, but sold from outside the US. The only exception that I know about was Circuitmaker/Traxmaker in Utah, but they were bought and killed off by Protel.
And AMS may have had an office in Florida, but I think I can safely assure you that the real main office was not in Florida.
It just seemed odd, that's all. No offense intended.
Joel, Ivex has moved around a lot, originally they were just a few miles away from me in the Vancouver, B.C., area. Then I had heard that they moved to the States. However if it must be known, the original software was originally written and designed in India by an Indian Telecom company (a state company?). I heard a rumor at one point that the owners of Ivex had moved the progamming/development to Korea but I never confirmed that.
Jim, What about PADs, PCAD, OrCAD just to name a few? While these days it may be hard to tell where they are actually programmed, I have heard rumors that Cadence has shifted OrCAD support./maintanence to India. Altium may be doing the PCAD development and support either from their San Diego digs or in Oz. PADs, even back when they were their own company (US) , some modules were being programmed in Russia and I believe some in Bulgaria by what I was told by various insiders.
As for your question why? Economics 101, specialized programs with a limited market to be done for a competive price point. And at that there are probably more cracked/stolen versions around than paid for legal versions. So Economics, economics, economics. Why are stereos made in Malaysia, Thailand, India, China?
--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.
"RST Engineering (jw)" wrote in message
news:2c2cc$44185c52$42512db5$17281@DIALUPUSA.NET...
>I hope I\'m not being too parochial, but it seems that almost all of the
>mid-range and low-end packages are done in a country outside of the USA.
>
> Eagle is German
> Pulsonix & EZPC are UK
> Rimu is NZ
> Protel is OZ
>
> I\'m just curious why?
>
> Jim
>
They really are daft. They used to do a 98UKP version, which was at least within hobbyist/ microbusiness range. They've dropped that. The free demo version is utterly unusable, as it can't load or save. It's as though they really don't want to sell it. Rather typically British I'm afraid.
My thanks to everyone for giving this subject its best airing for a long time.
Do people have strong opinions on which of the budget packages produce the highest quality actual pcb, bugs and bad user interfaces not withstanding. I need 6 layers in total with good control over split planes and DRC and I need it to look good! I only need to use it once as if on the off chance I made any money out of it I would probably buy ORCAD simply because I have used it a lot over the last ten years or so.
Some budget packages are not really useable for anything above the hobbyist level boards. The problem they have is charge only a hundred dollars or so for the product and have little or no money for support. A good example is the AutoTRAX product from a one man operation in the UK. You wouldn't risk a serious design to such a package.
Despite what the previous guy says, Easy-PC packs a big punch for the money. Why should he be hung-up on there not being a free version or that the Easy-PC website says Number One Systems....? If I search for Windows, Excel, Powerpoint I get directed to a website that says Microsoft.... If I seach for PADs I get directed to Mentor..... so what's it got to do with being 'British'....?
OrCAD looks to be on the slippery slope. The schematics is still good but the OrCAD layout product is from the stone age. It looks DOS to me......! What little dev that remains is now coming from India - the US OrCAD dev group is long gone. Cadence don't even sell it nowadays..... all sales are through Distributors.
Terry Porter used to post links to photos of his output from gschem / pcb / gEDA but he has switched servers so often that none of those links are still valid. They looked good, apparantly he was making a good living, and the cost of gEDA is ZERO.
I figure that choosing an ECAD is like selecting a car. All posts in this thread should conclude with a YMMV. . .
Ever done that before? Are you quite sure you want to?
formatting link
*-*-never-seen-split-grounds-work-well+save-a-plane-*-do-it-right+*-causes-*-as-many-problems-as-it-cures+Splitting-grounds-rarely-makes-sense+c-shaped-*-*+zzz+wrong-reason&fwc=1 The thread is indexed to specifics (in Courier so you can see Ken Smith's diagram); Larkin and Joerg give the overview near the beginning of the thread.
Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a product to handle 6 layers for nothing. You can buy good quality CAD for a reasonable amount nowadays so why mess with a free product like gEDA?
In general, such products are created by enthusiasts for the use of other enthusiasts. It's just like saying "I'm not going to use any commercial level wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation, publishing tools, only what I can get free on the internet". Yep, you will undoubtedly find such products but would you find anyone who relies on software tools for their livelihood wasting time with them........ No, of course not.
Rule of thumb: if you're a hobbyist, a technofreak, and/or design small and very simple two sided boards with just a few standard components then give the freebes a try. If you're doing any kind of commercial level boards of any size above small and simple then expect to pay at least $500 and upwards for something decent and reliable.
You can. It's called KiCAD, and it's similar to most low- end CADs. I don't like its interface, but people who have tried it say it works well.
KiCAD was developed by academic programmers, hardly amateurs. You can get full commercial grade wordprocessing, spreadsheet etc. totally free- look up Open Office.
The free products are often as well, or better supported than the equivalent commercial one. People may well be doing it for geekish fun in many cases, but is a geek likely to make a worse job than a bored hourly-paid programmer with a boss desperate to release product and a support department concerned mainly with saving face?
Because products like gEDA aren't just about being free (although that is nice). They are about giving you _full_ control over your design. Common sense says that commercial entities are interested in making money (right?) so they will do as much as possible to retain control over your designs that you created using their product (that is, lock you into using their product exclusively) and make it as hard as possible to use a competitor's product. I like to control the software I use.
Here's a good list of reasons why somebody would want to use gEDA (or any free software/OSS for that matter):
formatting link
(sorry about the long link)
[snip]
Here's a list of successful projects on the 'net (there are more out there; I just haven't found them and some are commercial people obviously do not post their designs ) that use gEDA:
formatting link
I would say that some of them are fairly non-trivial. It becoming more and more evident that free software/OSS tools are capable of being used to create complex designs.
PCB (part of the gEDA project) handles 8 layers by default, for no cost. Minimum board size is, as I posted before, about a third of a mile square in the development version (the latest released version is "limited" to 32x32 inches, just for you convenience, you can change it if you want). You can easily rebuild it for more layers if you need to (I've built it for 50+ layers before). Did I mention it's no cost?
So, your common sense needs adjusting.
And if it doesn't happen to do what you want, you have options that the commercial vendors can't offer you:
You can change it yourself.
You can get a friend to change it.
You can pay a contractor (your choice!) to change it.
You can pay (or bribe) one of the PCB developers to change it.
You can ask nicely and someone may change it for you for fun.
You can complain that it doesn't do what you like (ok, the commercial vendors offer this one as well ;)
Have you been hiding under a rock for the last ten years? There are a number of reasons why free and open source software is popular, only one of which is the cost. Assuming you are talking about desktop software (since no one but a fully paid astroturfer would suggest free and open source software is not suitable for server and infrastructure applications), a steadily increasing proportion of users rely on more and more free and open source software. Personally, I have not used commercial "office" applications in a professional context since a brief spell with Word 2 around 12 years ago. I specifically choose LaTeX for documentation, because it is a far more professional and capable system for technical writing than any commercial word processor. For simpler documents I actively choose Open Office - leaving an unopened, unwanted copy of Word lying on a shelf. For my programming work (my main job), I choose to use free gcc ports rather than commercial toolkits whenever I can. I do so because I get higher quality software, better control of the software, and better control of the work produced using the software. For some types of software I am even more extreme - in my role as IT manager for our company, I dictate that Internet Explorer, a popular commercial browser, is not to be used for security reasons, while open source FireFox and free (but not open source) Opera are suitable.
EDA software is a special case. The market is much smaller than for, say, a word processor, and writing EDA software is specialist work requiring a lot of effort to develop. This has meant the rise of free and open source EDA software has been a lot slower than in many other areas. Software like KiCAD is fine for small or hobby projects, but does not have the professional features for bigger projects. gEDA is capable of large projects, but suffers badly from its appearance and usability (or lack thereof). Quite frankly, the schematic and pcb screenshots look like something from an early 1990's DOS program. I'm sure it works well in use, but it's hardly going to attract new users without a major facelift (and a native windows port - cross-platform programming is not *that* hard, as long as you use toolkits like GTK or wxWidgets rather than XAW). What the open source tools do have, though, is open file formats - something that is sorely missed in this branch, and a major source of vendor lock-in.
So if you want to say there are no open source EDA tools that are ready for mainstream professional use, then I (unfortunately) have to agree. But that's not because of problems with open source as such - it is lack of money, time, motivation and direction that currently stops gEDA from being a match for Protel, OrCAD, etc. In other software branches where time, money, motivation and direction are available, then open source software is often superior to any available commercial equivalent.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.