New query for low cost PCB CAD that *works*

Name of the program please?

Hmmmm...Cadstar starts nice on price, but is impossible to get via the net (i am on POTS). And... where do i find about the price?????????????????

This is difficult. This process took place about 10 years ago and since then I have had a couple of nervous breakdowns (not CAD related ;-) ) and my memory is quite hazy about specifics. Also I retired from that company 5 years ago. Anyway, I cannot remember, but I will email one of my old colleagues there and ask him.

Ian

You might phone up the distributor and ask them to send you a CD.

If you don't want the hassle of being tagged by sales droids then you might get a local 'mate' with a faster connection to download it...

Failing that, if you want to be really silly give me your address and I'll snail mail it to you.... I'm in the UK!!!

Mind you, based on past experience I wouldn't recommend it.

DNA

Veribest was later renamed Mentor Expedition PCB.

It's remarkably powerful, but at the cost of intensive training. It's probably overkill if you're not doing packed boards with 0402 passives, BGAs on both sides, and 24 layers of impedance-matched traces.

I find Protel DXP and PCAD to both be very workable, although their notions of libraries and design rules and other major features are very different. Neither is inexpensive. Electronics Workbench Ultiboard works, too (I have the 2001 version and haven't "upgraded"), although its backannotation feature (changes from layout back to schematics) is broken.

-a

Le 26/11/2005 06:24, Robert Baer a ecrit :

i also don't like eagle, kicad, etc

many have strange insert and delete items. also poor library with missing common components.

the only who survived is but i have not really used it at this time.

What was it about Cadstar that turned you off? BTW, i e-mailed them asking how much a CD would cost (amhere in the US west coast). Will keep you in mind. Thanks.

I do not mind incomplete libraries; most waste HD space for me. But the software must support the creation and editing of new part footprints.

Thanks for mentioning Diptrace, will check it out.

One thing to note is that with any EDA package you are going to need to develop your own parts library. There are so many parts out there it is not possible or desirable for any vendor (or set of users) to provide library parts for even a substantial fraction of them all. Rather you should see the provided libraries only as a starting point to illustrate what can be done and to provide libraries for very generic parts like resistors and capacitors.

Ian

OK, I checked with my old colleague. The one we chose but then went off was Veribest. The one we changed to was Protel.

Ian

Thanks.. was curious.

Franck PISSOTTE wrote: : i also don't like eagle, kicad, etc

I'd be curious to hear why you don't like Kicad.

Stuart

Am still experimenting on WinQcad, but i think i am ready to move on and see if VuTrax is better. Good thing that VTX has their 9Mbytes split in 3 pieces, because i lost dial connection in the muddle of one download. If that had happened in the muddle of a 9Mbyte download, i would have quit and asked for a CD.

Seems my "try" list is growing... Got an e-mail response to DipTrace, and ordered a trial CD from them ($9.95). Got an e-mail response from CadStar with an un-useable password for their ZIP file which i cannot get (am on POTS).

Here is a PCB program that is board layout ONLY. I have not used it very much yet., but it looks to be a pretty easy to use program.

It does not have the complicated library problems that an integrated Schematic/PCB program has, so it is possible to use the same component footprint for different parts and not have to create a separate library entry for each part.

Jim Pennell

Tell me you're not serious. You don't use a Download Manager that will allow you to resume a broken download?

Oh..... I see from your headers that you are running Windows 98. Crapstar needs Windows 2000 or better to work.

DNA

Depends on your definition of expensive, but relative to Veribest, Protel was cheap.

Ian

I run multiple OSes; Win2K is my OS of choice for "large" and/or "fancy" programs. I have been running all of my testing on Win2K. Thanks for the info!