Bad Omen?

Yep, that is right. That's why I did :)

Good luck to them. It is still useless for me because I do not use Eagle either :)

For DigiKey the idea of that database was simple -- once one finished his design he could use the final BOM as-is for ordering all the parts from them because they already had their part nos attached.

What I found amazing is how most of them still have their hearts in Russia. Not from a loyalty point of view but emotionally. One engineer's eyes welled up when he talked about how he picked up his kids from school for the last time over there.

All of the above coming soon to the US of A, courtesy of Obama and the Forty Thieves (excuse me, Czars).

Those of us who can escape with our families will flee, then weep while we talk of what once was. ...Jim Thompson

Some industrial stuff was pretty good as well. Not state-of-the-art but well built. I have three Russian bench supplies here. Ok, one died and took some other equipment to its grave. But they have well-built frames, fully potted transformers, the QC manual has every step stamped and signed by the person doing the test. Amazing. The panel is in German but was obviously done by someone who did not speak German :-)

Yeah, that would save some time. But I won't use Orcad, the Windows versions crashed too often on me and I do not like their licensing model, or their cost.

Here, RS Components offers DesignSpark free, in retaliation, it seems, to Farnell's acquisition of Eagle. I have no idea what DesignSpark's parentage is, downloaded and installed it, but not tried it out yet.

I'm not near PCB design at the moment, prototyping on matrix for signal, and cut track blank PCB for power stuff.

Trouble I have with CAD is the memory of having to make my own footprints for most stuff as the included libraries were crap, but that was a long time (many years) ago.

Grant.

Most people still end up making their own footprints.

The IPC has made some progress in getting all this truly standardized, and there is a program to generate them for various popular CAD packages. Unfortunately (in my mind), the place doing the actual work was recently acquired by Mentor Graphics which means that the price will be skyrocketing and the on-going quality may or may not remain high.

...but this is the product, in case you're interested:

---Joel

Interesting, I never heard of DesignSpark. There isn't much information on their site, no manual etc.

That's the first order of the day after getting a new CAD, learn how to make library parts. Even if the parts in the standard lib are great it's just a matter of time until you need one that ain't in there.

Right home, need to register, download + install software, register it

Online help in normal windows form, with this at the end:

"Copyright © 1980 - 2010 WestDev Ltd. All rights reserved. E & O E"

Tutorials as local .pdf files.

So nothing's changed for last 1/4 century? ;)

At least this one can show correct 45' angle tracks' width. The pcad PCB CAD I worked with had a screen rendering error for 45' tracks (they rendered too wide, looked like the renderer used smallest vertical or horizontal width for angled tracks), that they said couldn't be fixed, due to "integer database", that they used to get a reasonable speed back then.

Zoom in and watch the tracks drawn, one by one, very slowly... Only gain using CAD was when one needed to rework a design, I could do a new layout on film with tape and donuts in about the same time as on the CAD back then. And, we had to plot the CAD stuff for PCB makers, no file transfers for a Gerber machine or suchlike.

Grant.

Thanks. I have bookmarked it for later, when I have time to install it. Right now using Eagle which is great but lacks schematic hierarchy. That's actually all I need to know, whether DesignSpark has that. Otherwise a switch won't make much sense.

Nope, not much.

I've never had a CAD do that on me. So far.

No Gerber generator? Weird. That sounds really pre-historic :-)

WestDev is the company that makes Pulsonix and EasyPC; Advanced Circuits' (4pcb.com) "PCB Artist" is actually just EasyPC in an OEM "skin."

Hence I suspect that DesignSpark is as well.

Assuming that's the case and that they haven't crippled any of its features, it will support hierarchy. See this link for the Real McCoy's feature set:

---Joel

...

Has a project file so multisheet schematics link via net names, close enough? I just found that in the online help, not used the program yet. It's BoM is hooked up to write RS Comp. parts, plus it references DesignSpark web site on startup -- so 'they' could pull the plug any time.

That worries me unless the thing import/exports some common datafile standard. But then I've read that Eagle can lock one into versions when using the restricted ones -- story was importing component from restricted library converted entire job to restricted, no idea how true.

Horror out there about anything, if one looks hard enough... ...

Pcad could generate them, but our local PCB makers couldn't use the files, needed plots and drill guides done the old manual way.

Grant.

But how could RS give it away for free if the product costs 447 pounds (UK)? Unless it's one of those limited pin number versions, that wouldn't be very useful.

Not really. A flat sheet structure can get messy when you exceed 5-6 sheets on an intricate analog design. For plain digital it can be ok.

So you must have an Internet connection to use it? That wouldn't work in real life, at least not in mine.

I haven't heard about lib restrictions yet but I tend to always make my own parts anyhow, except for jelly-bean stuff. The DRM that some folks are bitching about hits when using a schematic from someone who designed it with a cracked copy, and then building your own schematic from that one. No risk for that to ever happen here. I never use other people's IP unless it's a client and they asked me to.

Time to find a more modern PCB maker then. Unless they cook up a mean chili or there's a good brewpub next door :-)

Might be market share intro, program opens website during startup, leaves me a bit wary of using the thing, could be crippled any time, requires registration. Time-unknown demo? Dunno.

Too good to be true? Perhaps ;)

Grant.

Nah, this was 25 years ago.

Grant.

Hmm, even then we used Gerber. Although we sometimes sent the diskettes by mail. The truly floppy type, 5-1/4".

Ok, so it must see a web connection to start. That wouldn't be software I'd like to use. Any sensitive kind of design can't.