18 Feb
2010
18 Feb
'10
4:08 a.m.
On 2/17/2010 9:13 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Feb 16, 2010, at 8:14 PM, Keith M wrote:
I sure would like to know what one needs to smoke to agree with this :-)
I tried gEDA (includes PCB). Concerning PCB:
* Can't find a Windows version that works. A few builds are
available, but they are less than usable on Windows. So, I had to
install on the Linux box. Linux is viable as a platform, but a
lot of entries into this space are on Windows.
* IMHO UI is very non-intuitive (that's saying something from a guy
who learned the EAGLE UI)
* Changing options (trace width, etc.) much more cumbersome
* Could not find ability to change package for part already on board.
* I assume there is a way to select all elements in a drawn bounding
box, but could not find it
* Could not find a way to put rounded edges on polygons, like ground
and VCC pours.
* integration between gschem and PCB.
If PCB is better than all the 5 digit PCB CAD SW, then I shudder. I am
sure all of these things are surmountable, but I am not sure PCB is a
good choice for someone starting out in PCB design. I'm not sure I'd
recommend EAGLE, since it has the non intuitive UI, but there is
FreePCB, TinyCAD, ZenitPCB (http://www.olimex.com/pcb/dtools.html) for
the Windows crowd, and KiCAD looked credible for the Windows or Linux crowd.
I'll grant that PCB is extremely powerful, but I asked a designer to
work on a small board in gschem/pcb for me and I did a comparable design
in EAGLE. The designer has 10 years experience using gschem/pcb, and it
took twice as long to do the design as my EAGLE effort.. We're both
about the same skill level in design, it was a 2 layer board, 10 components.
I think one of the other options is a better choice (KiCAD is
OSS-compliant, if that's a requirement for the user)
Jim
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X)
brain at jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!
Home: http://www.jbrain.com
Good PCB design is hard to do for hobbyist.
There is essentially no
DECENT free software. Eagle is the closest, but then they have the
limitation of 2" x 2"(or something) boards on the free version. So
you take people NEW to PCBs and you place arbitrary limits which
makes it even harder for them to succeed.
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.
-Dave