PCB layout

Maybe you didn't. A google Web search and News search here on [Eagle CAD] gave 13,500 and 17,500 hits respectively. Limiting the area of the latter to the sci.electronics.* newsgroups reduced the number to

1,700 hits. Specifying the target more narrowly to [Eagle CAD PCB software] gave 449 hits. Of those, 340 appeared in this specific (and relatively light traffic) group, sci.electronics.cad, as you see here:

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Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK

here:

I'm not sure what your point is. I was trying to open a dialog. The link you give has lots of hits, but many are not very useful. For example, the first one includes these two messages, but in a thread discussing board layout services. Layout software gets a lot of cross hits.

Regardless, do you have anything to say about Eagle or other PCB layout software?

There was a recent thread at the classiccmp mailing list

It seems (my impression) that more people are using Eagle at home than those who are using other tools.

I am using gEDA tools for my first homebrew PCB board. Not done yet.

vax, 9000

Run out of cracks? Or perhaps this is someone who has stolen your identity? (Amazing what Google has in its archives, in't?)

GMT)

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Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

Well, if you are using Eagle legally, you could always use the very active and informative Eagle news groups at news://news.cadsoft.de - all the most active users and developers hang out there - the archive is complete and answers most questions.

Look for the *.eng groups if you are an Anglophone.

Mike

I am more interested in comparisons to other packages, which I don't expect to get at the Cadsoft group. I have used Eagle (the free version) and found it hard to learn, but ok once you get the hang of it. But I last used it over 6 months ago and now I am facing relearning it all over again. The library stuff was especially painful to learn. That is why I am considering using the crack. If I use it again and it does not stick with me this time, I don't want to have to toss $800 down the tubes. If I decide it is worth the effort of relearning it every time I do a board, I'll pay the $800.

So does anyone have anything to say about FreePCB or other open source alternatives to low cost PCB layout software?

Have you checked out gEDA and PCB? You'll probably end up making your own footprints, but if you're going to do that anyway...

Both are in active development, and have been used for a number of successful projects (like mine:

your

Those programs run well under Linux, but I can't even find straightforward info on how to install them under Windows. The instructions say, do this, do that, but not if you are using Windows.

We Windows users are not accustomed to having to install compilers before we install a tool.

I looked around quite a bit and FreePCB is the only one out there that is open source, built for Windows and seems to be usable. Please correct me if I am wrong. :)

This is relatively new, for PCB under windows:

I don't think that's limited to Windows users ;-)

Note that the gEDA and PCB developers are split as to whether or not we *want* to support Windows, but that's mostly a political argument.

Using Linux does not mean that you have to stop using Windows (although you may soon find that you want to).

Installing many modern Linux distributions is no harder than booting from a CD and clicking a few "want this, don't want that" buttons. It's also easy to move files between Linux and Windows environments.

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Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA