The PCB Design Thread: experiences, notes, suggestions . . .

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

.  .  .  and sharing information seems like a good idea to me. So far there is a lot of discussion scattered about in tangentially related threads. Collective knowledge concentration in dedicated threads has been my habit in the Hacks and Peripherals forums from what now feels to me like the dawn of time. :/

So here we go again! To get things rolling:

https://www.sfcircuits.com/pcb-school/pcb-design-software-comparison-guide#conclusion

That's ostensibly the top six and one of them is free!  []   I know some of you are now into KiCad for that reason. How's it going? What else might the rest of you be using and why?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

OS/Platform compatibility appears to be assumed on several sites I've visited, so compiling that data would be a big help for noobs like me.

 

[nyef]

I'm still reading through the sfcircuits article, but one thing that leaps out at me is the complete lack of version numbers for the software examined, or a date for the article itself.  This immediately limits its utility because there's no way to tell where it may be out-of-date.

On my end, my budget for PCB design software is measured in time, not money: I'm not going to pay for PCB software, but I might consider writing my own if necessary.  And given the licensing on Eagle 8, I'm starting with KiCad, as the "least worst" option (of, well, two evaluated).

KiCad is... quirky.  It definitely feels like open-source software, and clearly wasn't written in English to begin with. The tutorial documentation for version 4.0.x is a decent starting point, but the instructions for how to deal with routing aren't great (I had better luck after watching the video introducing the "push/shove" routing).  I still haven't managed to get a "full" autorouter to work, but I'm not convinced that that's a huge loss. Some features are only available if you're using OpenGL or Cairo for rendering, which is a bit WTF. And then there's the rather quick responds to dragging beyond the edge of the canvas (although that might be due to running the entire system in VirtualBox).  Overall, after a couple of days of poking about and trying things, I think that better could be done, but that there are limits to how much better can be done in the context of KiCad.  It is, however, usable, and I plan to keep using it at least in the short term.

 

[Bolle]

Eagle here for me.

Still have my students license from when I was studying.

We have been using Eagle already back then and I am familiar with it and also it is kind of industry standard.

I personally never use any autorouting features in Eagle (don't know how well KiCad performs on those) because every attempt I had at it things ended up way more complicated and worse looking than they should have been.

I like to think about how to lay out things in a way to keep things nice and clean. Letting the autorouter do its thing introduces the temptation to get lazy and not doing things as clean as they could have been when putting in some more thoughts and time.

 

[trag]

Still a fan of Osmond PCB.   Mac native.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Thanks to IlikeTech jumping into the game, I won't need to learn any of these tools yet. I think I'll do the PADS/Win98 setup for retro-tech playtime when I get a chance.

Keep 'em coming gang, please list strengths/weaknesses of your weapons of choice, you never know when this database thread will come in handy. Feature levels of Eagle licensing is something I'm curious about.

 

[joethezombie]

KiCAD doesn't have any internal autorouting.  You can get freeroute to work with it, but as I found out working on protocache, it works but is a complete disaster in regards to clean lines and has absurd complexity.  I had to create a 6 layer board for freeroute to complete on its own.  Bolle did it in mostly just 2 layers by hand.

 

[sfcircuits]

I'm still reading through the sfcircuits article, but one thing that leaps out at me is the complete lack of version numbers for the software examined, or a date for the article itself.  This immediately limits its utility because there's no way to tell where it may be out-of-date.

Hello nyef,

Thanks for going through our article and your feedback!

To answer your questions:

1. The article started off with just these programs -  DipTrace, EagleCAD, PADS, OrCAD and Altium Designer. Unfortunately, I don't have the exact versions handy but I'll see if our engineer does and I'll make sure to add them to the article. These 5 sections were added in September 2016.

2. We appended the article with Ki-CAD just a little over a month ago on January 10, 2018. That version is likely one of the more recent ones!

cheers!

:ii: