Thoughts on AutoTRAX PCB layout software?

My software seems to have numerous checks.

1/ Clearance check. 2/ Continuity check. 3/ Integrity check which compares PCB and schematic. 4/ Unconnected pin checks. 5/ Single ended nets warnings.

If a PCBCAD package has one or more of these missing you could end up with an expensive mess !

Hi Marra,

Your PCB layout software sounds interesting, but since you do not have any real screenshots of it on your web site (much less a limited pin demo), then most people are not going to waste even the few pounds sterling it takes to purchase PCBCAD. It may be really great software, but no-one will ever know it (except for the few people who may purchase it on Ebay). People may also be especially turned-off by (now please don't take offense) the incredibly horrid web site design you have that advertises PCBCAD.

-Bill

It sure ranks right up there!

Dave.

Your software seems to be pretty good at generating a mess, judging by the schematic on your web site.

Leon

That is a rather surprising number to me.

This has more to do with the amount of land available in the U.S. (and how long the U.S. has been "settled" by Europeans for) than income, I think.

Yeah, but due to technology buying an air conditioner is cheap today. You can find small window units for well under $100 used, and I've even seen plenty of people give them away on, e.g., freecycle.com. On the other hand, if you're living in a place like Arizona *running* the air conditioner is pretty hard for the poor... although perhaps not that much worse than paying for heating in, e.g., Minnesota during winter...

This too reflects a bit more about the size of the U.S. and the price of gasoline (still less than half of what most Europeans pay) than income: We don't have particularly good inter-city public transport in the U.S. and only the largest cities have anything approaching "full coverage" by busses and/or trains. Hence a car is a pretty high priority, even if you're poor... and hey, if you lose your home, it does serve as a place to live as many poor people are all too well aware.

Again, due to technology all these items are pretty dirt cheap today. You can easily find, e.g., 25" color TVs for, say, $20 at garage sales as morel-well-heeled people are upgrading to huge plasma or LCD TVs.

That one has always surprised me a bit, I guess because cable or satellite TV don't seem like particularly good value for the money if you're short on money... although it has been pointed out to me that ~$40/mo for "expanded basic" that you can plop your kids in front of and keep them out of your hair all day is a lot cheaper than childcare.

Also dirt cheap used.

Probably not one they bought themselves but rather one that came with the home or apartment. (AFAIK, pretty much all new apartments in the past 20+ years have dishwashers...)

The biggest problems for the poor in the U.S. seem to be health care (completely unaffordable if you're working at close to minimum wage) and the fear that, if your car does die, you won't be able to afford to fix it or get another one and this will prevent you from working which then gets you kicked out of your home for failure to pay rent or mortgage. Childcare is another biggy if you're a single parent. (A single parent with young children who has nothing better than a high-school diploma has a *very* deep "hole" to get out of in this country!)

---Joel

I've occasionally thought we ought to take up a collection to buy a copy and then just pass it around from perso to person to compare (only one person using it at a time, of course -- I'm not trying to rip off Marra here).

Hey Leon,

As a Pulsonix beta tester, do you have access to Easy-PC as well? Perhaps you could write up a comparison between Easy-PC and Pulsonix one of these days? Pulsonix is of course a little spendy for most hobbyists, yet I'm quite curious (and I'm sure others are too) what all you're giving up by taking that "step down" to Easy-PC... and for that matter what you gain: From the brochue at

, the "Design Calculators" appear to be a feature that Pulsonix doesn't have.

---Joel

You obviously haven't been near an emergency room in a while. The poor use the E/R as their health care. They come in for all reasons, and pay absolutely nothing for their care and prescriptions (given as samples).

It is now hard to get emergency care at the E/R's in Maryland.

-Chuck

Owning is usually cheaper than renting, or there wouldn't be so many people getting rich off rental property. You are paying the owner's mortgage payment, taxes, insurance and repairs, then paying him for the privilege.

I bought a new air conditioner for $79 five years ago. It gets used almost year round to lower the humidity.

How else do you get to work?

Actually, it's more efficient to have your own transportation, than to try to get other transportation. if you call a taxi, that can use over twice the gasoline, because they have to make two trips to your home.

A color TV is under %100. Mine is eight years old, and still working. That works out to $0.0339 per day.

I've given away five working TV sets over the last couple years, and keep having TVs given to me.

$29 at a lot of stores for a new VCR or DVD player.

senior citizen 20 channel cable service is $12.95 per month. There is no over air TV available here, without spending over $1000 for a 70 foot tower, antennas and amplifiers. that raises the property taxes, and the insurance rates as well.

I paid $2 for mine.

Pick them up for free at a thrift store and fix them for a couple dollars.

I use Pyrex dishes in the microwave. Easy to clean with hot, soapy water.

I haven't met them all, but there are over 3000 homeless US Veterans living in the Ocala National Forest. These men and women live in makeshift shelters and have no income, no health care and get little or no help.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

There's certainly some truth to this in some parts of the country. However, in many cases an ER won't treat you unless you really *do* have an emergency. I've been told that in many cases poor people who are finally admitted to the ER are there with problems that would have been *much* cheaper to "fix" if they'd been addressed early on. Hence you end up with the usual case of, "pay me now or pay me later," but with the later payment costing a lot more.

I don't think I'd blame the poor for bad triage? Every ER I've been to (granted, not that many -- fortuntaely!) had a triage nurse who spend about one minute with you sizing you how bad off you really were, and priotized your treatment accordingly.

---Joel

spend->spent

sizing you->sizing up

I apparently can't type well today!

I have at least 2000 buyers who dont agree ! I rarely get asked for help on the helpline so it must be intuitive and the manual holds up. Most comments are along the line of "A huge piece of software for very little money"

The customer is always right !

Oh, common Marra -- just put some bloody screenshots up on your web site to show people, at the very least, as to what your software

*looks* like!!! If PCBCAD at least *looks* good, you'd sell ten times more product (whether it functioned well is another matter entirely -- in fact, that's why most other companies have a thing called a "demo"). For heaven's sake, you programmed an entire piece of complex software; is it so damn hard to take some clear screenshots??? And, as I said, people get REALLY turned off and worried if you cannot even put up a presentable web site; these potential customers then, quite sensibly, wonder just how your software will look, and function, if they purchase it -- no matter how low the price. Come on, this stuff I'm saying is basic -- it's not marketing rocket science!!

-Bill

Sorry Bill, I thought that I caught somewhere in the thread that you were in the UK.

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

I have seen that stat list previously, highly suspect. My first suspicion is that very few homeless or down & out people fill out census forms.

-- Sincerely, Brad Velander.

Hi Peter, I was simply trying to point out that the deleting a footprint in Protel (Shift-click or Select, then Shift-Delete) will remove the footprint and it's conecting nets. Then the DRC will not report anything because the part and it's net connections are no longer in the database to be checked. There just seemed to be some skepticism that was the way it worked.

-- Sincerely, Brad Velander.

They don't have to, the census volunteers canvass the area and count them, whether they want to be counted or not. Basically, if someone in the community knew they were there, they got counted. The census canvassers were downright annoying, actually.

I seem to recall that the last census used some extrapolation for the first time. There was a certain amount of controversy as to whether the constitution allowed that.

-Chuck

I don't have the current version of Easy-PC, although I could have it if I wished.

I think that their general policy is to keep the products as distinct as possible, with Easy-PC intended for the hobbyist and educational market and Pulsonix serving the needs of the professional PCB designer. They sometimes add features to Easy-PC first, if a new release is imminent, and then incorporate them in Pulsonix when a new release of that comes out. Pulsonix has *lots* of stuff that will probably never be in Easy-PC like paired-track routing and microwave track mitering.

Leon

Hi Leon,

The standard gameplan in the U.S. then, would be to be handing out Easy-PC to universities for free or almost free to get the students "hooked," making sure they're aware that the "professional" version of the software is Pulsonix so that's what they should be purchasing when they begin working professionally and have some capital to blow. :-)

Yeah, but if you're doing serious microwave work you're going to be using ADS, Microwave Office, etc. anyway and then importing the Gerber output back into Pulsonix as one complete "stamp."

---Joel