On 2/17/2010 10:35 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Feb 17, 2010, at 11:08 PM, Jim Brain wrote:
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.
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).
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.
Changing an
existing trace.
* 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.
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.
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.
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