pcb design software and services

Proteus?

No connection with the company. just a very satisfied user of many years.

JB

would be for low volume prototyping, nothing fancy, maybe one step above hobbyist level. Any suggestions?

Take a look at

I've got gEDA and PCB on the Linux partition of my computer, but I've barely used gEDA and not used PCB at all.

One of our regulars is active in the gEDA development - which has been going on for quite a few years now - but he hasn't managed to convert all that many of the rest of us. I got onto gEDA not long after I started posting here. It's got a lot easier to install in recent years.

My last installation - into SuSE 11.4 - was completely painless. I'm about due to up-grade to SuSE 12.2.

I use Eagle. I can't say it's the best -- but it's good enough for me.

The last time I looked at open source stuff I wasn't impressed, but it was long enough ago that things may have changed.

would be for low volume prototyping, nothing fancy, maybe one step above hobbyist level. Any suggestions?

I have used FreePCB professionally, but I have read forums for geda and some other tools. FreePCB has a basic UI that is not hard to learn. There are two or three concepts you need to learn to use it effectively, but that is not really hard. Best of all, there is a very supportive user community which you can rely on.

Be sure to read the forum post for new users before starting. It will help get over the initial rough spots.

What do you plan to use for schematic capture?

Rick

would be for low volume prototyping, nothing fancy, maybe one step above hobbyist level. Any suggestions?

I recently used KiCAD for a small project. Before retirement, I used Protel/Altium for many years, and didn't have too much problems converting to KiCAD.

would be for low volume prototyping, nothing fancy, maybe one step above hobbyist level. Any suggestions?

I haven't tried yet, but Farnell (element14) is now offering PCB boards in 1-2 days via EuroCircuits

Pere

IMHO, it's still pretty hard to beat OrCad. Not the new Cadence stuff, the old DOS OrCad, which runs very well under Win XP, or DOSbox or DOSemu under Linux. It's available for download from the "OldDOSOrCAD" group at Yahoo Groups. John Durbetaki, OrCAD founder is a member there,along with many other users loyal to this day.

-peter