Board Layout Tool

There are Ubuntu and other Linux distro Live CD and DVDs which are EDA oriented.

On Ubuntu's site and elsewhere. easy to find.

Packages available for Windows & Linux. Includes schematic capture and board layout. I get the boards done at Sunstone, no problems. A Gerber viewer is included but I also do a preview of the Gerbers with ViewMate just for the warm'n'fuzzy of having a third party app look it over.

SunStone PCB people have their own program you can use..

ExpressPCB and ExpressSCM is another..

Jamie

looks like they have a newer version than what I have in this machine..

Maybe I'll do the updates..

Jamie

I highly recommend FreePCB for layout in Windows. It will import a netlist from any schematic programs that outputs in PADS format.

Many people who use FreePCB also use TinyCAD. I haven't tried it yet as I am still using an old version of OrCad.

Both programs have very helpful support forums. FreePCB is on the web site at freepcb.com and TinyCAD is a yahoo group.

I have used FreePCB commercially to produce designs for Fortune 1000 companies.

Rick

If you've got a Linux distribution running on any of your computers, take a close look at the gEDA project . It's been around for more than ten years now, and it's certainly easy to install under SuSE.

KiCad does the job for me and is available for both Windows and Linux. Schematic capture plus PCB layout, uses standard format netlist files so presumably can import from other schematic capture tools, BOM generation, Gerber and Excellon output.

Chris

I looked at it about a year ago. The schematic entry part looked (barely) functional. The PCB layout looked woefully low on capability to edit the board, and the coverage of the layout-vs-schematic seemed to be poor, too. Has there been a lot of work on this since then?

I use Protel 99SE, which is quite good, and the LVS has never let me down. A few things are just a little cumbersome, like multi-channel schematics, but the stuff I do on it is not up to where this is enough hassle to warrant spending more money on it. I don't think I could actually make a serious board with what I saw of gEDA. I really WOULD like to move to an open source EDA package and say goodbye to MS-based products.

Jon

I guess not. A customer of mine is using gEDA and PCB exclusively though. Also for multilayer boards with large BGA packages. I guess it is a package with a steep learning curve. I have used gEDA and PCB once and decided to shell out a couple of grand on a real EDA package.

If you don't mind the (free) registration to activate and the commercial affiliation...

Latest version integrates LTSpice (which has to be separately installed) via custom libraries.

The included library set is reasonably comprehensive (esp for hobby work) and the lib editor is also quite slick for a low-end product.

HTH Chris.

Just another hobbyist just giving another vote for KiCad.

Have fun with your hobby!

Sincerely, Rene

The gEDA package does have a steep learning curve, and I've not yet had the motivation to get very far up it - it seemed to be mostly used by people who were happy to re-write the bits they didn't like. The impression that I've got is that it can do anything you need but you may have to dig around a bit to find out how to do more complicated stuff.

Commercial packages aren't immune from this kind of problem. I used Orcad 4 happily for schematic capture for a couple of years, but the up-grade after that was horrible, and the first version of the up- graded printed-circuit layout package that came with it was a total disaster - you couldn't do manual layouts (though you could edit the results of the machine-generated layout) and you had to add a huge pile of information to every component on the schematic before the system would condescend to start generating a layout for you.

That is one of the advantages of the FreePCB package if you are using Windows. It is easy to learn. It has just one stumbling block about how to route traces. You have to have a rat line on the layout first. People expect the tool to follow their arbitrary routing and it can't do that. But if you start by routing points connected by a rat line it works great. Not hard to learn, but not obvious if you don't know.

Rick