Design tools Was: Mystery IC: Allen Bradley 314B102

[Jay Jaeger]

On 12/19/2015 9:33 AM, Todd Goodman wrote:
> * Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> [151218 17:38]:
>>     > From: Brent Hilpert
>>
>>     > I need to move to something newer but I haven't evaluated current
>>     > schematic-drawing programs
>>
>> Dave Bridgham got me started with KiCAD, and that seems like a pretty good
>> system to me. It has separate sub-systems for schematic capture; circuitry
>> checking; netlist generation; PCB layout; etc, etc. I've only worked with the
>> first three, but it seemed pretty good for them.
>>
>>     > I'm a little concerned they won't provide the degree of control or
>>     > finesse I like
>>
>> Well, you'll have to try it and see, but it's pretty customizable: they
>> provide libraries of common components, but it has a nice component editor
>> for drawing up new ones (or customizing the ones it comes with).
>>
>> Component location and line routing (in the schematic capture) are manual,
>> but it's grid-based, so things line up.
>>
>> 	Noel
> 
> Not to mention it's open source so if you don't like the control you
> have you can always change it as desired.
> 
> Todd
> 

I settled on and used KiCAD for both the schematic and PCB layout for my
Mark-8 project and a couple of other smaller boards, after looking at
AutoTrax (DeX), DesignSpark and DipTrace.  I actually installed and
tried AutoTrax and DesignSpark.

I had no problems at all with KiCAD, really.  Open source, open ended.
Had no issues sending the boards off to be fabricated, etc.

JRJ