16 Apr
2008
16 Apr
'08
1:12 a.m.
At 10:07 PM 4/15/2008, you wrote:
If you need a program to "draw" a PCB, then Pentalogix has
ViewMasterEZ. Its not for Linux, but it is the best deal for what it
does. They dropped the price from $500 to $50, but with the addition
of a node locked licnese.
Its more of a WYSIWYG CAM/CAD program than a cad program. There are
no "parts". You can download the free version called ViewMate. Its
mostly the same thing but without the ability to save. Use it for
verifying the integrity of your gerber files before sending them out.
I haven't found a single program to do everything, and none of them
are compatible with each other. : (
Right now
I'd rate [gEDA] as good as or better than any commercial
schematic capture package I've seen. PCB is right up there too, but
it has been there for a long time.
PCB looks promising. Its bar is set too high for me to try installing
it as-is (to name just the three major problems: (1) the GUI
interfaces; (2) ./configure; (3) all the GNU tools needed). But given
what the INSTALL file says about its architecture, it may well be close
enough that it's less work to adapt it than to create something new.
They are reasonably portable and not difficult to
build on a modern
system.
Only if "modern" means "with a pile of GNU tools installed, an ugly
bloated GUI library kicking around, and an installer who's willing to
accept low-to-medium security risks". I'm wondering if it's worth
setting up an isolated machine to see if I can stand to use PCB out of
the box. (Most popular programs with GUI interfaces have interfaces I
find somewhere between obnoxious and intolerable - this is whence the
"ugly" characterization - so my choice of wording should be taken as
being more about me than about PCB.)
This is very encouraging. I was expecting to be constructing the
Gerbers for this latest project manually; given the maturity you
describe in PCB, it probably is worth at least looking at adapting it
before falling back on manual construction.