Low cost PCB layout software

It would be a Good Thing if the Windows app vendors would post MD5 sums alongside the download links -- at least for large files -- as is common practice over in the Linux side of things.

FWIW, my connection here is usually pretty clean and the 4.11 I just downloaded installed OK. The checksum is

FA53F89BCD6430F6B3F610FCD84044C6 eagle-4.11e.exe

If you don't have md5sum, here's one place to get a Windows binary, along with a usage summary. I think there are GUI-ized versions, too.

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

It's a personal preference thing as much as anything else. When I

*first* started working with EAGLE, I also found it unintuitive, because it doesn't behave like other Windows applications. There are a couple of things that are decidedly non-Windows-standard. For instance, you don't use the Copy tool to copy, you use the Cut tool. And the procedure is not simply "select item to copy, and click copy". The procedure is:

• select item(s) to copy

• click Cut

• either click Go, or right-click on where you want the pickup point to be.

The reason for this, by the way, is so that you can select where the grab point on a group lies. The default (clicking Go) is the center of the selection.

Like all of its counterparts, EAGLE is descended from a DOS package. (It was also at one time available for OS/2). Cadsoft decided to stay with consistency with the old DOS interface in preference to moving to a more standardized way of doing things.

4.11 has ironed out some of the oddities in the library manager, which was also a bit unusual to use.

The bottom line is, whatever package you use will have a learning curve. My experience with Eagle and OrCAD, both of which I've used for my "daily bread" (plus a couple of packages I just evaluated) is that you have to expect a significant learning curve to use any of these packages *effectively*. I wouldn't say EAGLE's is steeper or longer than any of the others.

Hi,as I said you need to make your own parts anyway, so you might as well evaluate how to do that at the outset.

I'm not sure if this one is already mentioned.

Gerard

Help me with this. I downloaded the MD5sum program and the checksum is not ok, then what do I try to fix? I have done the same downloads several times from this website and they just don't seem to work. Other sites download just fine and the programs run.

I use a download utility called Star Downloader 1.42 and have never had any trouble with it before. I repeated the download and got a different wrong checksum.

Can anyone make these files available from a different source?

Greetings, I am a retired consulting EE. I have been using Eagle for many years. I was a beta tester for the OS2 version and have just bought the

4.1Pro version but I have not installed it yet. I like the autorouter and think it works quite well. I would be willing to sell it all to you or I offer my services to do the schematic capture and board layout for you. I'm always looking for ways to make a little extra money to support my R/C airplane habit. My email is:ahorne1 at comcast dot net. If I can be any help feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Art

It would be quite enough to use ZIP (or ARJ, LHZ, etc) formats, possibly combined with a self extractor for the unwashed. All such formats include internal consistency checks and can be examined before installation. MD5 is simply overkill, but can also be used internally for the consistency checks.

*** Ad Hoc Committee to Stamp Out Delivery in Executables ***

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
     USE worldnet address!

Ralph Malph wrote: Well,

I'll throw in the lone voice of the Macintosh community. I use Osmond, which is currently a freeware package being created, but is VERY good. It can't autoroute (which no one seems to like anyway) but it does support partlist and netlist files, copper floods and "ratsnesting" which allows you to see what pins should be connected. Building your own libraries is very easy, as is doing minute individual mods after the board is done. It can handle any number of board layers and does the standard modern Gerber and drill file outputs. Joe (the author) also does a Gerber-to-PDF tool so you can look at the gerber file outputs to make yourself feel better about the final product. I've used the files on a bunch of PCB manufacturers and never had any complaints.

He has both OS9 and OSX versions of the software. You can get it here:

If you are into Mac electronics, don't bother with the Douglas PC layout system, it looks like the last time they gave that package a facelift the

80286 was the hottest thing on the market...

I use LogicWorks 4.0 to do my schematic capture, then massage the parts and connection list files to work with Osmond to give me a GREAT CAD package for PC boards. Designworks would be a better package, but Logicworks is about $80 and comes with a book on Amazon.com - Osmond is free.

have fun, DLC

: I am looking for low cost PCB layout software. My designs are not : overly complex, and are on small boards, but I will be using very small : parts and features ~0.4mm/0.016" pitch, .006"/.006" trace/space. I have : looked at a couple of web sites that list free software and have found : two types of packages; the no strings attached open source packages that : are not very mature or run on xNIX (and not windows) or the PCB fab : house supplied packages that tie you to getting your boards from them.

: Clearly I need something that actually works, so most of the truely free : packages are not viable. The PCB package from :

seems to work, but is not : supported under windows. It is not clear if it will run under Cygwin. : I guess I could dedicate a machine to PCB design and run Linix, but I am : pretty sure I would end up creating problems from my lack of experience : with *NIX.

: I looked at a few of the PCB vendor packages and have done one design : and ordered boards. It was fairly low risk since it only cost $59 : including shipping from expressPCB. But these boards have no soldermask : or silk screen. I can live without silk screen, but the solder mask is : important when using fine pitch parts. In general, I am not happy being : tied to a vendor and having to duplicate the layout work to use a : different vendor. Reentering a schematic is no big deal, but layout is : very time intensive and each tool is toally different.

: So that brings us to the commercial layout packages. Most of them are : several kilobucks and out of my budget. I found a list at :

of a lot of packages, but there is : no real info on them. So that is why I am here. Can I ask for opinions : on what tools will give the best benifit for the cost of the low end : tools? I hate to spend even $100 on a tool that I am not sure I will : want to continue to use, but if I have confidence that it will be a good : tool, I would not mind paying $500.

: So what are my options and how good are they for fine pitch work, up to : 6 layers?

: And does anyone have any experience with TCI3? It seems to be a free : tool, but when I follow the link, the page is in French. Anyone know if : the tool can be used by English speakers (and readers)? Any English : docs? I guess I could learn metric dimensions; 0.15 trace - 0.15 space : :).

--
============================================================================
* Dennis Clark         dlc@frii.com                www.techtoystoday.com   * 
* "Programming and Customizing the OOPic Microcontroller" Mcgraw-Hill 2003 *    
============================================================================

Thanks for the info, but other than this one tool, there are not many engineering uses for Macs; at least there are not many that I can use. The bulk of my work is doing DSP and FPGA design and FPGA tools just don't exist on the Mac. I don't know of any DSP tools on the Mac either.

Dennis Clark wrote:

Try a simple FTP from ftp://ftp.cadsoft.de/pub/program/4.11/. If you don't have an FTP client, there's one available from

--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

Please don't toppost. Your answer belongs after the material to which you are replying, after snipping out whatever is not germane.

I thought MACs these days were running Linux/Unix in one form or another. This opens up the whole world for them. At worst such things as WINE and DOSEMU should allow you to run ugly Windoze and DOS applications.

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
     USE worldnet address!

I was under the impression that MAC OS X was able to run many UNIX apps. Is this not true, or are there no DSP tools for UNIX?

Mark Borgerson

about

and

package

Denis did you post in the eagle forums on the thread requesting an eagle version for macosx ?

Can't remember which forum it was. And don't have a link.

They were considering it a few months back. I haven't heard anything about it since.

Alex Gibson

That is correct, Mac OS X is a variant (Darwin) of FreeBSD UNIX. X Windows is supported (with a free download from Apple); standard supplied shells are tcsh (C shell, extended) and zsh (Korn shell, extended). "gcc", "cc", "ld", and "make" are present, "imake" is supplied with X Windows...

Yes, but I hate the way Apple did it. I wish they had implemented the new Finder as an X window manager. As it is, there is no integration whatsoever between XWindows and "normal" applications. Particularly disappointing in the case of openoffice.org. (sigh). But it was a great step forward for Apple to use the UNIX kernel.

I got the file to download correctly by telling the download utility to download it in one stream rather than in several. I am not sure how multiple streams helps, perhaps improving speed when the source limits bandwidth to any one stream.

But now that I have tried to use Eagle, I do not find it an easy to use tool. One of the first tasks I have is to make a foot print for a TSSOP20 package. I can find various commands to add the SMD pads, but it is *extremely* tedious since I have to calculate the X,Y of every pad and then go though a process of creating each one and moving it to the right location using the mouse. Since the X,Y coordinate shown depends on where the pad is picked up using the mouse, I have to use the info command to find the current location, make sure I pick it up by that location and then move it to the correct location. I tired using typed commands for this, but the editor complains saying the move command can only be used on "boards".

I can't seem to find a way to pour copper on this part, which it needs to create a large pad under the body for heat conduction. I suppose I could add an extra pin to the schematic and use the SMD command, but that seems like an odd way to do it.

All in all, this seems like yet another program that is very far from modern GUI techniques. I have drawn this layout in Visio to make sure it will fit on the board and it was much, much easier to do than it is in the board layout package.

I have looked at the tutorial and did not find it very enlightening. Anyone know of other sources of info on how to use this tool? The manuals just don't cut it.

Try working through the tutorial. It isn't that difficult. I'm definitely no expert but to place pads at regular intervals I set the grid to the pad spacing and set the ALTernate grid to 1/2 of the pad spacing interval. Then all that is needed is to select SMD, set the pad size as needed and click away. The right mouse button rotates the pads as needed. What I haven't found yet is an easy way to number the pads as I desire. Presently I go back and selet the RENAME tool and edit each pad after placing them all. BTW the grid set button is the one in the upper left corner of the window which has a rectangular array of dimples. The current version (4.11) has a nice feature where you can OPEN your custom library, then from the control panel browse the other libraries. When you find a DEVice or PACkage that is close to what you need, it can easily be copied to your open library. Good luck.

-Bill Knight R O SOftWare

But the grid works in both directions, X and Y. Just by coincidence this worked out for this part (off by only 0.0002"). But in general the spacing in the X and Y directions will not have a happy multiple. I guess I expected to have a way to enter the coordinates of a pad as text to save all the awkward GUI mouse stuff. But I don't see a clean way to do that. I would have expected an interface based on a DOS program to have keyboard commands for this sort of thing.

I did not do it, but it looks like they can be done in order and you get the right names.

Wow, that is only avaialble with the most current release? Seems like a standard sort of feature that should have been in place long ago.

Thanks for your advice. I figured out some of it on my own, but a lot of what you said is new and useful.

I am drawing the footprint of a TSSOP20 with a thermal pad underneath. I think I have the 20 pins (SMDs) laid down ok, but I am very unclear on how to do the thermal pad. I added a 21st SMD in the area where the solder mask is open for connection. I also added the vias for thermal connection to the back of the board. I am unclear if this is a good way to handle this or if I should use PADs instead. The TI data sheet recommends 10 vias of two different sizes, one inside the open area and a larger via outside the open area. I guess this was not a good chip to use for a first try of the software.

"Lew>

I agree as long as you don't mind answering questions :)

Is there a better group for discussing board layout or Eagle?