18 Feb
2010
18 Feb
'10
5:10 a.m.
On Feb 17, 2010, at 11:57 PM, Jim Brain wrote:
It's a UNIX package. The
fact that some people have managed to
build it under Windows doesn't make it a Windows package.
I don't have an issue with the heritage or the target audience. I
do, though, struggle with suggesting it as an alternative to EAGLE
(which has UNIX and Windows versions).
I wasn't suggesting it as such...Keith said there are no good free
packages, and there are. PCB is suited to higher-end commercial
development, not newbies, but that wasn't what he said.
Hmm. I guess that was the context, though. :-/
Eagle is pretty powerful, and is pretty much the "standard" for
low-end development and smaller boards. PCB is geared toward larger
stuff. You don't sit down and whack out a board in an hour in
PCB...but you don't design an entire (big) computer in Eagle.
I've not looked at KiCAD.
Well admittedly I'm running development snapshots. They PCB
developers are a bit lacking in the "just cut a damn release
already!" area.
Changing an existing trace.
Not click-click trivial, no. If memory serves, you have to select
the trace, and execute a function by name to change its width.
Just tried it on v20081129 (the latest gEDA install on the page) in
select mode. It keeps wanting to grab the first item it snaps to.
Yeah that's pretty old snapshot by now. I'm not sure why the
later stuff isn't more readily known to those not on the mailing lists.
Agreed.
Welllll...I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that peoples'
expectations are changing. PCB design is a developing art, but it's
not moving THAT quickly. I use pretty much the same techniques with
PCB on a Sun Ray terminal backed by a big multiprocessor Sun as I did
on a huge desk-based Calay system in 1988.
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
No,
there's *excellent* free software. For one, PCB (http://
pcb.gpleda.org/) is as good as all but the very best five-digit-
pricetag commercial stuff I've seen, and it's getting better
literally every week. I've done a number of both commercial and
hobby designs with it, as have many others.
Yes,
there's a huge learning curve. The same is true for most
powerful software. There's really no way to dumb it down enough
to hide the complexities of PCB design, unless you seriously
lobotomize the functionality. See ExpressPCB for an example of that.
Dunno, I find EAGLE very powerful, and less of a learning curve.
KiCAD looks to also be less of a learning curve. Now, that
said, unless you've used it in the past two years or
so, you've not seen where it has gone. It is under extremely
active development, and usability has been a major focus. It even
has photorealistic board rendering now.
I installed the RPMs from the gEDA Download page last week. I
tried all of the things in my email immediately prior to writing
the message. * Changing options (trace width, etc.) much more
cumbersome
Three clicks, or is it two? Or do you mean changing the width
of an existing trace? You actually have to type a command to do
that. * I assume there is a way to select all elements in
a drawn
bounding
box, but could not find it
Click, drag a rectangle box to select. (at least if memory
serves) You need to be in "select" mode. I
haven't tried that. If you really want that, I'm sure one of
the developers could do it pretty easily.
It's very useful to make wide sloping power traces for expansion
boards. There's
lots of integration already, notably lacking back-
annotation. The integration thing has been an uphill battle since
they were developed independently until the past 6-7 years or so.
I know, and I know they have come SO far since that time (I first
tried the SW about 5 years ago, for a few minutes). I am trying to
not be critical of the work they have invested in it.
Unfortunately, while they are busy getting the UI up to people's
expectations, the expectations are fast moving forward. I am also
sure it is hard to make a nice UI for what is a very complex process. Still, for newbies, I am just not sure PCB is the path
I would
recommend. Truly, as much as I loathe the tie-in of ExpressPCB to
their PCB fabrication business, I'd probably recommend it if EAGLE
was not an option, at least for the initial trials of a newbie user.
For newbies, yes, I have to agree. As I mentioned in the top of
this email, I kinda blew it here by ignoring the context of the
thread. For that I apologize. In that context, I agree
wholeheartedly with your points.
-Dave