Schematic/Layout programs

I told Tsvetan about it, he's updated the listing.

Leon

Definitely no! Anyone who recommends this hasn't tried it (especially PCB).

Er, I'm one of the developers, so certainly I've tried it. What about it bothers you so much?

I think Cadstar has moved on a long way since you last saw it. The think I dislike(d) about Cadstar schematics was the inability to have a true hierarchical design.

Do you mean other than it is hell on wheels to install it on a Windoze box?

Jim

Hi Leon,

Yes, and depending on the multiplier you choose you can get it to the point where *no* grid is displayed.

I'll send you a test file...

They're aware of it; Colin Cook and I were already discussing it yesterday.

A couple more (minor) bugs:

-- If you select multiple teardrops on the same net and hit alt+enter to get to their properties, the properties dialog only applies to the first teardrop selected and not all of them

-- When creating a footprint, if you copy and paste a pad with a net assigned to it, not only doesn't have that net assigned to it, but the original has its net name renamed

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, Pulsonix is a very good tool, and they are very good about fixing their bugs.

---Joel

Bugger, so you're saying I should download the latest demo version and reappraise myself about it rather than give old blokes experience about it....

OK, I will go find and download.

Mind you if this involves registering type crap then I will not be happy.

BTW, there is no concept of true hierachy.. you just need the tools to define it yourself.

DNA

computer?

Yes, I have run the tutorials for both V6, 7, and 8 with no crashes.

falling off?

Hahahahaha.. Wonderfull. I have not seen the pictures, so I believe they are gone.

when

Yes, no problems deleting. At least not anymore.

I admit there is a fair number of patches shortly after a new major release. But as far as I have been plagued by the bugs, the updates from Zuken has always been very quickly distributed.

of

My objections to Protel is not about the structure of the programme itself. I agree that it has a nice look and feel. My objections to protel is in its bugs and quirks, that does not (at least at the time I used it) get fixed or does not get fixed quickly. Especially the "drop net" bug in the PCB designer had me annoyed more than once. Suddenly Protel would drop a net, leaving you unwarned and with a potentially broken PCB. Also I have had several bugs where the netlabels in the schematic editor only appeared to be connected. The netlist for the connection was never generated though. Dragging and reattaching the netlabel would fix this.

My experiences with Protel stopped at 99SE version, so I cannot comment on the current state of affairs.

Salesdroids rarely know alot about the stuff they are trying to sell. This certainly does not apply only to Cadstar droids. :-) I have always been very happy with the quality of service I have gotten from the Zuken support in my local area.

Yes, people should use the tool that work for them and that they are happy with. When the job gets done within its time- and qualityframe, everything else matters not.

Yes it does, but beware. You might just end up not hating it. I think pricing is an issue to consider in the discussion as well, at least for many smaller companies. Cadstar is relatively cheap compared to other tools I know of. Of course Protel is now much more than scematic capture/PCB design, and Cadstar is not, but the discussion was initially not about those extras...

Best regards Henrik (with no affiliation whatsoever with Zuken, still just a happy user)

I have the free viewer (because my layout contractors use Cadstar) and I registered and now have Cadstar spam (although to be fair it's not every company in the world emailing me). Note I had to register to get the free viewer though.

some things are quaintly renamed (although accurately, but that's a pain when we have de-facto names). Example : everyone I know calls the raw net conenctions a ratsnest (because that's what it looks like) and in some tools it is called that (Allegro for example). I must have spent the better part of half an hour trying to find the equivalent in Cadstar (connections).

There are also some menu options that don't seem to make a lot of sense, but then that's true of all the packages.

As I said - it's ok. When I need to do serious high density highspeed routing, I prefer Allegro (yes, it's expensive, yes it has a steep learning curve. It's also excellent once you master it, although nothing's perfect).

I don't know if Cadstar can (for instance) let me set a group of differential pairs where there is a rule for the pair, and rules for the group of pairs, and then let me move the entire group [sideways for instance] maintaining the group and diff pair rules automatically. (There are more things, but that is *very* useful when you have a few thousand diff pairs on the board).

Cheers

PeteS

Must be good. Google Cadstar and we are in...... Bloody Hell, they don't look so proud any more....

As they say....

"Don't let years of legacy and archived schematic data stop you - sample conversions available"

Excuse me lads are you talking about your customers who used your software and then found that when you changed it it was not compatible with the new stuff or is that some phone us up and we'll ask a couple of thoasand to convert someone elses format into one our software works with for only $2000, plus it won't work anyway and we've already done it so it cost us nothing and you must be totally stupid if it does not work.

Never Mind.....

"A complete post-layout signal integrity simulation toolset, seamlessly integrated into CADSTAR."

If you can't make it work then, according to Section 1 of the sales manual you must be some sort of stupid. I shall e-mail your boss and explain how all of my other clients have had no problem so you must be some sort of stupid.

Let's go for it....

I don't like it.... 300 pins 50 components and step by step telling me I'm stupid.

I shall leave you know.

DNA

Which one should I download?

Considering it's a unix/linux program, I imagine it would be.

Besides, we only got PCB itself building under windows recently. Windows support is brand new. Unix support is decades old.

- The primary problem of PCB is that it doesn't assign the nets to the traces. This makes it extremely difficult to find shorts and edit the PCB in general because the traces get cluttered together and PCB thinks it is one connection. Now which trace goes where?

- The copper pours and thermals are hell

- I want a Gerber silk screen for documentation purposes which isn't interrupted by the pads.

- I want meaningfull errors on bad file input

- I have to click & drag around too much with the right mouse button. Started to make my wrist go sore.

- I won't go into compiling the latest version...

The schematic capture package of gEDA is quite good, but it would be nice to be able to edit all part properties in one dialog (like Orcad and Xilinx do in there schematic capture packages) to save a lot of clicking around. At some point I started editing the schematic and parts in a text editor instead of using the GUI.

Overall: it took me 1.5 weeks to get a simple design done with geda / PCB. The same process took me 3 days with Altium DXP which was also completely new to me. Okay, there is a price difference, but the Altium DXP package nearly paid itself back for shortening design time.

I must admit that PCB also runs fine on an SGI Indy...

Well, Cadstar is not in the same league as Allegro. We had a demo of the Allegro tools, and dragging busses looked easy (although the demo board was a little on the empty side). But, for the price of a small house, we didn't change from Cadstar :)

As always, of course, it depends on what you need :)

As to another comment about a tool being Unix/Linux for ages - most high end tools started on Unix and ported to Windows. Maybe they're slow enough they won't even have to bother now Linux is actually becoming truly useable (not so much for me as my support).

I will note that the Cadence tools (Orcad, Allegro, etc) are available for Unix (solaris), Linux and Windows. Makes it easier to do cross platform stuff.

Cheers

PeteS

I've heard rumors it "just works" on Mac OS/X too.

Guess you havent ... but that doesnt mean it doesnt do what it says it does, ESPECIALLY PCB, which I use on a regular basis for hobby work and otherwise.

I've heard about this type of thing before; DRC should do a better job of figuring out where the short is.

Yup. We've talked about this before.

Does it have to be a silk screen, or just "a gerber layer" for notes? I recently added many-layers support, as preparation for more types of layers, one being annotations.

Noted.

In PCB? Right mouse is now the pan tool; you can always use the scroll bars, but if you're moving around on the board a lot, I'm not sure how we can help with the lots of movement thing.

Ctrl-right is a "mega panner" which grabs both scrollbars at the same time. Me, I usually use the wheel to zoom out, then zoom in on the new location, if it's more than a screen away.

Have you tried gattrib? That's what it's for. Dan's working on ways to invoke tools like that from gschem's main menu.

As usual, note that we're not trying to compete with the high-end professional packages. gEDA and friends targets the hobbiest to mid-range projects, mostly because there just aren't enough developers to do more.

Actually, PCB started on an Amiga, and was ported to Unix :-)