New query for low cost PCB CAD that *works*

Well, I guess it's all a matter of personal opinion - and to be honest, it's a good while since I tried Seamonkey. I don't see browsing and email as related (nor chat, which I don't use, nor html editing, which I seldom do). Prior to switching to Firefox, I used Opera as my main browser - but never it's email client.

There is plenty that could be done to improve Firefox (in particular, it should be made much easier and clearer to new users how to get extensions, and there should be a hierarchy of "standard", "specialised" and "experimental" extensions to make it easier to quickly get what you need). But it is in no way an IE clone - I have recently been unfortunate enough to have to use IE, and it is not remotely as convenient and useful a browser as Firefox or Opera (ignoring little details like security...).

Seamonkey may be actively developed, but

relegates it to "Other software", and fails to mention it at all. That should give a fair idea of the priorities of the Mozilla Foundation.

As for footprints - there is also the download footprint to consider, at least for Robert - Firefox is much smaller than Mozilla.

But the choice is good - Mozilla for those that want a suite, and Firefox/Thunderbird for those that don't.

mvh.,

David

They did not say that; they only said IE, period.

You're right - they do say that on the web page. It seems a bit odd, given that they have explicit support for Opera, Netscape and Firefox in the program. The website is pretty skimpy on details of the program - it certainly doesn't make FDM look like a must-have utility. However, I've tried a few download managers over the years, and FDM is the best I've used. It does everything I need, integrates well with my browser, and although it is not open-source, it is free to use (i.e., not shareware or adware).

This apparently seems a strange idea to you, but I *choose* to have separate applications for email and for browsing. I invariably have both open at the same time, but whether or not they share a code base is basically irrelevant to me. At work, I use OE for email - mainly due to the effort involved in changing, rather than because I think it is particularly good. With appropriate safeguards, it's done a serviceable job. I use thunderbird for news, and firefox for most of my browsing. On linux, I've used a couple of different email clients and a couple of different browsers. I really don't see why my choice of browser should in any way influence my choice of email client - saving 10 or 20 MB of run-time memory footprint is not a good reason.

It seems strange to me that you think the only reason anyone would prefer firefox and thunderbird is because they are in some way brainwashed from over-use of Microsoft software, or that this is the only reason firefox was created in the first place. If anything, it is far more in keeping with *nix philosophy to have separate applications for separate purposes, with choices for each job, and far more in keeping with windows philosophy to have a single monolithic application doing several partly-related jobs. And just because Microsoft makes a particular design decision, does not necessarily make that design bad, nor does it mean that anyone making a similar design is copying them. Firefox was originally created by people who felt that the development of Mozilla suite was too slow, the code too large and monolithic, and the gui system too complicated. They decided to take the rendering back-end and make a lighter, simpler dedicated browser around it. It turned out to be so popular that people prefer it to the original.

The people at MOFO were not "idiots", and they did not "remove the choice from their user base". They looked at what people wanted, and what people used, and what their developers wanted to work on - and thus concentrated on Firefox and Thunderbird. These are all open source applications - no one can remove your choices. As long as there are people interested in using and developing Seamonkey, then it's development continues, and everyone has the choice.

When Protel first came out it was very cheap. Once it became popular the price went up dramatically, and the quality of their support shot down. It is extremely clear that the current programmers on Protel, have never used the program to do a real design. They have added all sorts of fluff that slows everything down, and they keep trying to forcefeed their idea of how one should organise one's design files.

Regards Anton Erasmus

I'm impressed - really... Doesn't PCB module have limitation to let's say 12 or 16 layers??? I'm trying to find some usefull software since I switched to linux... At work I use p99SE&DXP so it's a bit hard for me to "step back" at home I've tried gEDA - what dissapoints me most is the tone of posts on forums - where all problems are ended with "the bigger pro is the fact that this software exists". When I've read that updating from sch do pcb is so hard because there are mismatches with footprint names - my eyes started to open widely 8-| My first problem was "so how can I know what list of footprint is avaliable?" - I've discovered that many people add elements to PCB manually so in fact it isn't so important to have correct footprints definitions at schematic level. But - I didn't give up yet. I tried Eagle also - looks very easy to use but somehow different from flexibility of protel series - I didn't try to define my own elements so probably I haven't seen many problems yet. I'll try kicad and vutrax since there are linux ports.

XTC

PCB is provided in source form. Change globalconst.c from this:

#define MAX_LAYER 8

to this:

#define MAX_LAYER 24

and recompile, and it just works. There are a few gotchas, like there are no defined layer colors above 8 at the moment and one binary can't support both 8 and 24 layer boards (i.e. you just need two binaries, pcb and pcb24), but I tested it with a 56 layer board. The GUI was messy but it worked.

If >8 layer boards become more popular with PCB users, we'll make it easier to do. Until then, it's not at the top of the priority list.

I think most of us create our own footprints anyway. It's a big topic at the moment, especially with the new footprint standards coming out. There are a couple of developers working on figuring out what to do about it.

Well, this should be easy - open the library window in PCB :-)

The old libraries made this difficult, as they were parametric - one file for all DIP footprints, one file for all SMT footprints, etc. The new library is one file per footprint, so a simple file listing tells you what's available.

There are also a few websites with footprint catalogs and generators so you can add to the "base" library.

Well, it's important to have *correct* footprints (although even then there are multiple ways of making a "correct" footprint). It's less important to have *all* the footprints, because we realize that we can't please everyone anyway, so I think we're shooting for the 90% solution.

That's the spirit! Plus, the gEDA/PCB developers are very open to constructive criticism. It only helps us too.

Have you tried Kicad? Open source and runs on Windows or linux. Find it here:

Ian

In fact - I've heard about kicad today - when I've come to an idea to look for some newsgroup about gEDA. I've read this topic and I've downloaded both kicad and vutrax. I'll try them tommorow.

XTC

Andrzej XTC wrote: : >Have you tried Kicad? Open source and runs on Windows or linux. Find it :> here: :> :>

: In fact - I've heard about kicad today - when I've come to an idea to : look for some newsgroup about gEDA.

GEDA info is readily available at:

Documentation at:

FAQs and answers to selected questions at:

A wonderful step-by-step tutorial for gschem -> PCB is available at:

Stuart

Andrzej,

Would you keep us posted on the results of your comparison? Most of my work is embedded software, but sometimes I need early hardware to write the code. Which means I have to design some circuits and a PCB. I have used Eagle (free version that came with a book on card design) for a simple card, but It won't work for the next one because it is too large and needs 2 signal layers plus 2 power layers. So I will need to do something soon and could use your input.

I just read Stuart's article on gEDA in Linux Journal, and it is a very good over-view, but no details. Hope Stuart will follow-up in LJ or Circuit Cellar with a detailed example of a card with an ADC (they typically require a ground plane under them) and some digital components for a

2S2P design and throw in some analog and digital simulation. I will also look at the gEDA site for documentation and a tutorial.

One other comment about the LJ article. Stuart uses the software design process to describe analogies to the card design process. I agree with Stuart on most of it, but one point I don't agree on is the use of separate tools. I have found that a good IDE can be very productive - more so than separate tools all with different interfaces. So I hope at some point the gEDA group will consider doing something like an IDE for gEDA (like Eagle or LT Switcher from Linear) for those of us not into card design professionally.

Dave,

Andrzej XTC wrote:

My first steps with geda were with this tutorial. I've encountered some problems - for example footprints definitions. To be clear - I'm not a fan of "give me all footprints" - no ... for me

1206 0805 and few dips would be enough since other I'd prefer to define by myself. Step /gaf/myproject1$ gsch2pcb project didn't work for me... It looks that I'm not able to convert whole project to PCB. adding "verbose" attribute - shows that gsch2pcb knows that my project include those two demo schematics - but - no effect. I had to convert every schematic and then "load to buffer" and "load netlist". Simply when I converted: gsch2pcb one.sch and I tried to open the result using: pcb name.pcb there was always an error processing such simple file. I don't know if it's a problem with more complicated elements or anything else. I plan to start with simpler structures - for example resistors only - to see what's going on.

XTC

I'm right after let's say 1hr of KiCAD session. First of all - I'm really impressed by the interface. Looks very good from the first sight. I didn't install whole package since I didn't read install documents - I know - my fault. I've downloaded binaries only (linux ver). I've created my own R & C schematic symbols and connected them. Maybe it's quite obvious novadays - but I haven't seen it in eagle

- simple but efficient autojunction feature. Today I've downloaded whole package - it comes with some standard libraries so I hope I'll be able to test it more. The best test will be - to try develop any real world small project (you know - every program is simple if you do something step by step in some creator mode or ready made elements - It's always harder when you try to achieve exact effect). Anyway - it's quite simple - other aspects I'll probably post them here.

XTC

If you need support there is now a yahoo group for Kicad users. Find it at:

Ian

Useless unfortunately... because of Yahoo. XTC

Today I've tried to use copper-pour's in KiCAD. It's a little bit tricky - since at start - when you want to define "zone" area - you should right-click track - only then You can define netname for zone. Everything else is ok... maybe - it looks that there is no possibility to move or reedit zone shape (or maybe I haven't found it yet). But in my opinion board with 2S2G is very easy to make (using those zones as planes - there is no "carve" mode for them /I don't remember how it's called in Protel/ so propably you'll have to draw shape with gaps manually). I'm still impressed with this software. Automatic loop removal - online DRC (in fact clearnance only), via dragging. Probably there is no track editing - since they are not treated as in protel - you can delete, split in desired place - but I haven't found a possibility to drag a part of it (but as I mentioned - when I drag via - tracks are still connected to it).

XTC

What are you talking about?

Ian

There IS a possibility to edit and drag nodes of any track - after unlocking selected track. One more thing that is specific (In my opinion). With online drc - when track is in prohibited area - you just can't set point for track there

- I mean there is no highlight of tracks - you just cant put it (probably just a thing to get used to - but my first impression was "damn my mouse button doesn't work" :)

XTC

I tried KiCad briefly, but never found out how to alter a track on the PCB satisfactorily, so I gave up. It seems rather counter- intuitive compared with most CAD systems I have tried.

And the Yahoo group as a means of communicatiuon is just rubbish. I signed up, translated a page or two of the manual for them, sent it back, then Yahoo wouldn't let me back in any more after that. Maybe Yahoo thought I put naughty words in the translation.

The KiCad thing looks a good idea, but having to think through the mind of the guys who created it is difficult.

Paul Burke