Cheapest PCB manufacturer in china

the cheapest

I'm a longtime Altium user (took the free upgrade from PCAD, but pay optional annual maint cost). I have not found Altium to be buggy, quite the opposite. But I do miss many of PCAD's creature-features.

Libraries, the library system, and the ease of creating parts is a big issue. I prefer Altium in that regard.

All EDA packages have quirks and bugs- occasionally Altium will pop up a window saying access denied or something, and the floating license server can be a problem.. and sometimes it seems far more difficult than necessary to do something.

But it's pretty good. I do like the ability to put my own (or someone else's) 3D CAD models into footprints and create a model of the board pretty much as it will be once assembled. Making the 3D models takes a bit of time sometimes but it forces you to concentrate on understanding the drawings- sometimes there are subtle features that are not obvious, especially on SMT parts that expect cutouts or edge punching/routing that is not straightforward.

I don't think Orcad has kept pace- we still have a couple licenses but are not maintaining it.

Wasn't there supposed to be a free or almost free (limited?) version of Altium aimed at hobbyists? Did that ever happen?

--sp

Tim

How does CircuitMaker compare to Kicad? I'm a pure novice at this, so my interest is in the easiest for a novice to use.

(I've made homebrew PCB's without any CAD, just a sketch on a quadrille pad and an asphalt-based-ink pen :-) ...Jim Thompson

here a video series on doing a design in kicad

I don't know much about circuitmaker but as far as in understand it you _must_ store everything in the cloud and it is all public!

-Lasse

Gack! I'm adverse to "the cloud" irrespective of IP-value or not. Somewhere along the way we need to cut off big brother's balls >:-} ...Jim Thompson

I think FreePCB is a very easy tool to use. The hardest part is just installing it. You have to install a fairly old version then update it to the current version. Exceedingly intuitive to use. The only part I had any trouble learning is the stub traces. They aren't technically part of the net list since they don't connect anything, so they have to be added differently than the point to point connections.

From what I've heard, if you want to keep private designs, with unlimited capability (no arbitrary size/pad/etc. restriction), while using the best software, KiCAD is where it's at. I haven't used it myself (why would I need to, I have Altium? ;-) ), but I understand it's not so terrible despite being open source. (Compare to gEDA, which is just about unusable, as I recall.)

CM I think is somewhat like "Altium Lite", but with that stupid ribbon of Office fame, and all the keys are wrong. (Or right, if you've never used Altium. Who knows. Most other programs don't use key combos like Altium does, so that might be the case.)

It's cloud-only for the free version. Pay for private/professional use, basically.

Which, to be fair: considering a lot of maker/hacker users will be sharing their junk *ANYWAY*, they kind of might as well.

So if you're a professional, you should probably look for something other than CM.

Dave Jones (of EEVBlog fame) used to work at Altium, so many years ago; to this day, he has more than a few choice words for their design choices. ;-) The cloud base is one such sticking point for him. But he's a professional, too, so needs that assurance.

(FWIW, if you take the plunge and get Altium, it prefers to log in to your subscription, but you don't need to. You can always run it locally, offline, using the local (and automatically generated, after one online login) license file kept on the computer.)

Tim

Thanks.

I know that there are lots of manufacturers that *can* do it. These pcbway guys are the first I have seen with an online quoting interface interface like the "hobbyist" sites have (dirtypcbs etc), that scales down to hobbyist prices for the simpler boards. And having a forum presence gives me some way to judge likely quality and some recourse if they stiff me.

But yes I should shop around too.

Hi Win!

It's definitely buggy; check their own forums for the enraged users. Mine crashes several times per day, which is completely normal it would seem. Unacceptable for software that cost $10k. (But I do accept it of course).

Yes they are good there. Also the 3D support is very nice as Sphero says.

OK. I downloaded Kicad. Bewildering for a novice. Any understandable tutorials available? The "help" is a nightmare for a beginner. ...Jim Thompson

-Lasse

I recommend you join this group which seems to be a good source for a beginner. They have discussed tutorials many times so you can likely find one just by exploring the group.

One issue that comes up from time to time regards the libraries. I believe the default is for updates to include libraries. If you don't separate your own library items they will be removed each time the library updates. So be sure to manage your libraries separately. Also, don't take my word for it, do the research. I haven't started using Kicad yet and so I'm giving you second hand advice.

Thanks! ...Jim Thompson

Sorry, forgot the link...

Nice! I downloaded all 7 of the Contextual Electronics videos (720p) plus a few others in ~17 minutes and will play them with VLC. ...Jim Thompson

es:

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ost

this one is a bit more fast paced and to the point

-Lasse

Great! Thanks! ...Jim Thompson