advice on selecting new PCB design package

[megoodsen]

Hi,

In leui of a FAQ for this group, here goes with a likely hot
chestnut...

I'm looking for a good schematic capture and PCB design package to
replace our very flaky EasyPC.

We need both good schematic and PCB layout capabilities, ideally in one
system.

Best I outline the requirements...
We do pretty straightforward analogue and digital designs, and a lot of
microwave RF designs.
We create a lot of our own components (sch and PCB elements) as many of
the parts we use are very often not in any libraries.
Our boards (especially RF boards) are often multilayer, with blind
vias, have curved tracks of need-to-be defined width and length, and
always copper pours. (EasyPC copper pours lets us down a lot).
We also need to export boards (with components) to 3D mech CAD
(Solidworks) in some format.
We need good autorouting for non RF boards of course.

The players I am looking at are:
Electronics Workbench
Eagle
OrCAD
Cadstar
Pulsonix

I'd really appreciate comments from users of these packages about their
suitability for our tasks, and if they are stable in use etc.

thanks

 

[Charlie Edmondson]

megoodsen wrote:

Hi,

In leui of a FAQ for this group, here goes with a likely hot
chestnut...

I'm looking for a good schematic capture and PCB design package to
replace our very flaky EasyPC.

We need both good schematic and PCB layout capabilities, ideally in one
system.

Best I outline the requirements...
We do pretty straightforward analogue and digital designs, and a lot of
microwave RF designs.
We create a lot of our own components (sch and PCB elements) as many of
the parts we use are very often not in any libraries.
Our boards (especially RF boards) are often multilayer, with blind
vias, have curved tracks of need-to-be defined width and length, and
always copper pours. (EasyPC copper pours lets us down a lot).
We also need to export boards (with components) to 3D mech CAD
(Solidworks) in some format.
We need good autorouting for non RF boards of course.

The players I am looking at are:
Electronics Workbench
Eagle
OrCAD
Cadstar
Pulsonix

I'd really appreciate comments from users of these packages about their
suitability for our tasks, and if they are stable in use etc.

thanks

You would find ORCAD adequate for all these tasks, as it is designed as

a full, commercial package. However, if you really need to do good RF
design, add Microwave Office to your list.

Charlie

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:00:06 -0800, the renowned Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

megoodsen wrote:
Hi,

In leui of a FAQ for this group, here goes with a likely hot
chestnut...

I'm looking for a good schematic capture and PCB design package to
replace our very flaky EasyPC.

We need both good schematic and PCB layout capabilities, ideally in one
system.

Best I outline the requirements...
We do pretty straightforward analogue and digital designs, and a lot of
microwave RF designs.
We create a lot of our own components (sch and PCB elements) as many of
the parts we use are very often not in any libraries.
Our boards (especially RF boards) are often multilayer, with blind
vias, have curved tracks of need-to-be defined width and length, and
always copper pours. (EasyPC copper pours lets us down a lot).
We also need to export boards (with components) to 3D mech CAD
(Solidworks) in some format.
We need good autorouting for non RF boards of course.

The players I am looking at are:
Electronics Workbench
Eagle
OrCAD
Cadstar
Pulsonix

I'd really appreciate comments from users of these packages about their
suitability for our tasks, and if they are stable in use etc.

thanks

You would find ORCAD adequate for all these tasks, as it is designed as
a full, commercial package. However, if you really need to do good RF
design, add Microwave Office to your list.

Charlie

Is anyone using Agilent ADS?

 

[Robert Lacoste]

"megoodsen" <hq105862@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
1140686047.914352.18380@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Hi,

In leui of a FAQ for this group, here goes with a likely hot
chestnut...

I'm looking for a good schematic capture and PCB design package to
replace our very flaky EasyPC.

We need both good schematic and PCB layout capabilities, ideally in one
system.

Best I outline the requirements...
We do pretty straightforward analogue and digital designs, and a lot of
microwave RF designs.
We create a lot of our own components (sch and PCB elements) as many of
the parts we use are very often not in any libraries.
Our boards (especially RF boards) are often multilayer, with blind
vias, have curved tracks of need-to-be defined width and length, and
always copper pours. (EasyPC copper pours lets us down a lot).
We also need to export boards (with components) to 3D mech CAD
(Solidworks) in some format.
We need good autorouting for non RF boards of course.

The players I am looking at are:
Electronics Workbench
Eagle
OrCAD
Cadstar
Pulsonix

I'd really appreciate comments from users of these packages about their
suitability for our tasks, and if they are stable in use etc.

thanks

Hi,

I have right now exactly the same problem, looking for a new CAD tool, for
nearly exactly the same kind of designs (mainly RF).

On my side I added one constraint : budget under 2-3K$. That reduced my list
to the following : PADS (but without any autorouter for this budget), Eagle
(but may be a little limited for difficult RF designs), and Proteus
(Isis/Ares). CADSTAR seems great but a little over budget for me, Orcad,
Pulsonix and Protel are significantly more expensive as far as I've found.

So I am tempted to give a try to Proteus, I've just downloaded the demo and
the tool seems quite well done and full of features, even if the user
interface seems not really windows-standard. Any experiences from Proteus
users, especially doing RF designs ?

Cheers,
Robert

 

[Robert]

"Spehro Pefhany" <speffSNIP@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote in message
news:mdrrv1hivek7fsv2lb5bjchit1tupph2cm@4ax.com...

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:00:06 -0800, the renowned Charlie Edmondson
edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

[snip]
I'd really appreciate comments from users of these packages about their
suitability for our tasks, and if they are stable in use etc.

thanks

You would find ORCAD adequate for all these tasks, as it is designed as
a full, commercial package. However, if you really need to do good RF
design, add Microwave Office to your list.

Charlie

Is anyone using Agilent ADS?

I wrote some Foundry tools in that when I was doing support for folks like
Ericsson and Nokia. Though Nokia preferred Aplac.

Robert

 

[Leon]

Robert Lacoste wrote:

"megoodsen" <hq105862@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
1140686047.914352.18380@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Hi,

In leui of a FAQ for this group, here goes with a likely hot
chestnut...

I'm looking for a good schematic capture and PCB design package to
replace our very flaky EasyPC.

We need both good schematic and PCB layout capabilities, ideally in one
system.

Best I outline the requirements...
We do pretty straightforward analogue and digital designs, and a lot of
microwave RF designs.
We create a lot of our own components (sch and PCB elements) as many of
the parts we use are very often not in any libraries.
Our boards (especially RF boards) are often multilayer, with blind
vias, have curved tracks of need-to-be defined width and length, and
always copper pours. (EasyPC copper pours lets us down a lot).
We also need to export boards (with components) to 3D mech CAD
(Solidworks) in some format.
We need good autorouting for non RF boards of course.

The players I am looking at are:
Electronics Workbench
Eagle
OrCAD
Cadstar
Pulsonix

I'd really appreciate comments from users of these packages about their
suitability for our tasks, and if they are stable in use etc.

thanks

Hi,

I have right now exactly the same problem, looking for a new CAD tool, for
nearly exactly the same kind of designs (mainly RF).

On my side I added one constraint : budget under 2-3K$. That reduced my list
to the following : PADS (but without any autorouter for this budget), Eagle
(but may be a little limited for difficult RF designs), and Proteus
(Isis/Ares). CADSTAR seems great but a little over budget for me, Orcad,
Pulsonix and Protel are significantly more expensive as far as I've found.

So I am tempted to give a try to Proteus, I've just downloaded the demo and
the tool seems quite well done and full of features, even if the user
interface seems not really windows-standard. Any experiences from Proteus
users, especially doing RF designs ?

They bought Proteus where I used to work. It was usable (a friend of
mine did lots of designs with it, including some complex 6-layer ones),
but had lots of bugs and shortcomings. Support (in the UK) was
non-existent. I used it once when he was on holiday, just to modify a
couple of tracks, and it was *very* hard work. Perhaps I am spoiled,
I've used Pulsonix since it first came out.

Leon

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Hi Leon,

Speaking of modifying tracks...

"Leon" <leon_heller@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140779005.759499.78640@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
"I used it once when he was on holiday, just to modify a
couple of tracks, and it was *very* hard work. Perhaps I am spoiled,
I've used Pulsonix since it first came out."

In my experience Protel is better than Pulsonix when it comes to the
"automatic loop removal" feature that's quite useful while re-routing tracks.
(Pulsonix seems as after as not to think you're drawing a new track rather the
re-routing.) How about you?

 

[Leon]

Joel Kolstad wrote:

Hi Leon,

Speaking of modifying tracks...

"Leon" <leon_heller@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140779005.759499.78640@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
"I used it once when he was on holiday, just to modify a
couple of tracks, and it was *very* hard work. Perhaps I am spoiled,
I've used Pulsonix since it first came out."

In my experience Protel is better than Pulsonix when it comes to the
"automatic loop removal" feature that's quite useful while re-routing tracks.
(Pulsonix seems as after as not to think you're drawing a new track rather the
re-routing.) How about you?

I've never really used Protel. I tried it a couple of years ago, just
out of curiosity, but didn't like it all. I found it very difficult to
use.

Leon

 

Hi,
Our Company has been using ORCAD for years and we are now switching
over to PADS due to a lot of problems with ORCAD.
PADS has a good link to Hyperlinx in case you want to simulate your
PCB's performance. ORCAD claims to have .HYP generation capability but
it does not work correctly.
PADS layout is extremely good, supports interactive and autorouting,
handles impedance pairs easily -even when autorouting!- and easy to
use. Of the many packages I have used so far, PADS is the best!

Regards,
Telep

 

[megoodsen]

Telep,

Could you tell me what kind of problems you had with OrCAD?

On paper, EASYPC does a lot of what we want, but in reality, it too
gives us too many problems and loses a lot of time as a result...

thanks

 

[JeffM]

which of the budget packages produce the highest quality actual pcb
Colin (colin_toogood @ yahoo.com)

Terry Porter used to post links

to photos of his output from gschem / pcb / gEDA
but he has switched servers so often
that none of those links are still valid.
They looked good, apparantly he was making a good living,
and the cost of gEDA is ZERO.

I figure that choosing an ECAD is like selecting a car.
All posts in this thread should conclude with a YMMV.
..
..

I need...good control over split planes

Ever done that before? Are you quite sure you want to?

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.design/browse_frm/thread/1656681d9bef69bd/9d104f8f54b69ee7?q=*-*-never-seen-split-grounds-work-well+save-a-plane-*-do-it-right+*-causes-*-as-many-problems-as-it-cures+Splitting-grounds-rarely-makes-sense+c-shaped-*-*+zzz+wrong-reason&fwc=1
The thread is indexed to specifics
(in Courier so you can see Ken Smith's diagram);
Larkin and Joerg give the overview near the beginning of the thread.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"Paul Burke" <paul@scazon.com> wrote in message
news:47smpvFhc0e3U1@individual.net...

http://www.numberone.com/index.asp
Typically, the url doesn't even mention EasyPC.

Ah, thanks. I was thinking Number One's web site was for a distributor
selling both Pulsonix and EasyPC, but I was clearly mistaken.

It's as though they really don't want to sell it. Rather typically British
I'm afraid.

Haha...

 

Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a product
to handle 6 layers for nothing.
You can buy good quality CAD for a reasonable amount nowadays so why
mess with a free product like gEDA?

In general, such products are created by enthusiasts for the use of
other enthusiasts. It's just like saying "I'm not going to use any
commercial level wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation, publishing
tools, only what I can get free on the internet". Yep, you will
undoubtedly find such products but would you find anyone who relies on
software tools for their livelihood wasting time with them........ No,
of course not.

Rule of thumb: if you're a hobbyist, a technofreak, and/or design small
and very simple two sided boards with just a few standard components
then give the freebes a try. If you're doing any kind of commercial
level boards of any size above small and simple then expect to pay at
least $500 and upwards for something decent and reliable.

Prescott

 

[Paul Burke]

DMBPrescott@aol.com wrote:

Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a product
to handle 6 layers for nothing.

You can. It's called KiCAD, and it's similar to most low- end CADs. I
don't like its interface, but people who have tried it say it works well.

In general, such products are created by enthusiasts for the use of
other enthusiasts. It's just like saying "I'm not going to use any
commercial level wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation, publishing
tools, only what I can get free on the internet".

KiCAD was developed by academic programmers, hardly amateurs. You can
get full commercial grade wordprocessing, spreadsheet etc. totally free-
look up Open Office.

The free products are often as well, or better supported than the
equivalent commercial one. People may well be doing it for geekish fun
in many cases, but is a geek likely to make a worse job than a bored
hourly-paid programmer with a boss desperate to release product and a
support department concerned mainly with saving face?

Paul Burke

 

[Ales Hvezda]

DMBPrescott@aol.com wrote:

Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a product
to handle 6 layers for nothing.
You can buy good quality CAD for a reasonable amount nowadays so why
mess with a free product like gEDA?

Because products like gEDA aren't just about being free (although
that is nice). They are about giving you _full_ control over your
design. Common sense says that commercial entities are
interested in making money (right?) so they will do as much as
possible to retain control over your designs that you created using
their product (that is, lock you into using their product exclusively)
and make it as hard as possible to use a competitor's product. I
like to control the software I use.

Here's a good list of reasons why somebody would want to use
gEDA (or any free software/OSS for that matter):

http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda:faq#why_what_makes_geda_so_different_from_other_eda_tools
(sorry about the long link)

[snip]

Rule of thumb: if you're a hobbyist, a technofreak, and/or design small
and very simple two sided boards with just a few standard components
then give the freebes a try. If you're doing any kind of commercial
level boards of any size above small and simple then expect to pay at
least $500 and upwards for something decent and reliable.

Here's a list of successful projects on the 'net (there are more out
there; I just haven't found them and some are commercial people
obviously do not post their designs ) that use gEDA:

http://geda.seul.org/links.html#projects

I would say that some of them are fairly non-trivial. It becoming
more and more evident that free software/OSS tools are capable
of being used to create complex designs.

-Ales

--
Ales Hvezda
ahvezda AT seul.org
http://geda.seul.org

 

[DJ Delorie]

DMBPrescott@aol.com writes:

Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a
product to handle 6 layers for nothing.

PCB (part of the gEDA project) handles 8 layers by default, for no
cost. Minimum board size is, as I posted before, about a third of a
mile square in the development version (the latest released version is
"limited" to 32x32 inches, just for you convenience, you can change it
if you want). You can easily rebuild it for more layers if you need
to (I've built it for 50+ layers before). Did I mention it's no cost?

So, your common sense needs adjusting.

And if it doesn't happen to do what you want, you have options that
the commercial vendors can't offer you:

* You can change it yourself.

* You can get a friend to change it.

* You can pay a contractor (your choice!) to change it.

* You can pay (or bribe) one of the PCB developers to change it.

* You can ask nicely and someone may change it for you for fun.

* You can complain that it doesn't do what you like (ok, the
commercial vendors offer this one as well

 

[David Brown]

DMBPrescott@aol.com wrote:

Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a product
to handle 6 layers for nothing.
You can buy good quality CAD for a reasonable amount nowadays so why
mess with a free product like gEDA?

In general, such products are created by enthusiasts for the use of
other enthusiasts. It's just like saying "I'm not going to use any
commercial level wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation, publishing
tools, only what I can get free on the internet". Yep, you will
undoubtedly find such products but would you find anyone who relies on
software tools for their livelihood wasting time with them........ No,
of course not.

Have you been hiding under a rock for the last ten years? There are a
number of reasons why free and open source software is popular, only one
of which is the cost. Assuming you are talking about desktop software
(since no one but a fully paid astroturfer would suggest free and open
source software is not suitable for server and infrastructure
applications), a steadily increasing proportion of users rely on more
and more free and open source software. Personally, I have not used
commercial "office" applications in a professional context since a brief
spell with Word 2 around 12 years ago. I specifically choose LaTeX for
documentation, because it is a far more professional and capable system
for technical writing than any commercial word processor. For simpler
documents I actively choose Open Office - leaving an unopened, unwanted
copy of Word lying on a shelf. For my programming work (my main job), I
choose to use free gcc ports rather than commercial toolkits whenever I
can. I do so because I get higher quality software, better control of
the software, and better control of the work produced using the
software. For some types of software I am even more extreme - in my
role as IT manager for our company, I dictate that Internet Explorer, a
popular commercial browser, is not to be used for security reasons,
while open source FireFox and free (but not open source) Opera are suitable.

EDA software is a special case. The market is much smaller than for,
say, a word processor, and writing EDA software is specialist work
requiring a lot of effort to develop. This has meant the rise of free
and open source EDA software has been a lot slower than in many other
areas. Software like KiCAD is fine for small or hobby projects, but
does not have the professional features for bigger projects. gEDA is
capable of large projects, but suffers badly from its appearance and
usability (or lack thereof). Quite frankly, the schematic and pcb
screenshots look like something from an early 1990's DOS program. I'm
sure it works well in use, but it's hardly going to attract new users
without a major facelift (and a native windows port - cross-platform
programming is not *that* hard, as long as you use toolkits like GTK or
wxWidgets rather than XAW). What the open source tools do have, though,
is open file formats - something that is sorely missed in this branch,
and a major source of vendor lock-in.

So if you want to say there are no open source EDA tools that are ready
for mainstream professional use, then I (unfortunately) have to agree.
But that's not because of problems with open source as such - it is lack
of money, time, motivation and direction that currently stops gEDA from
being a match for Protel, OrCAD, etc. In other software branches where
time, money, motivation and direction are available, then open source
software is often superior to any available commercial equivalent.

Rule of thumb: if you're a hobbyist, a technofreak, and/or design small
and very simple two sided boards with just a few standard components
then give the freebes a try. If you're doing any kind of commercial
level boards of any size above small and simple then expect to pay at
least $500 and upwards for something decent and reliable.

Prescott

 

No........ haven't been under any rocks old friend. Right, so you use
open source all the time do you...Mmmmm. Is this professionally or
personally...? If it's professionally can you divulge the name of your
company? Does it have a website? Can you tell me the number of staff,
revenues, etc...?

You went into a long attack on my logic then say:

"gEDA is capable of large projects, but suffers badly from its
appearance and
usability (or lack thereof). Quite frankly, the schematic and pcb
screenshots look like something from an early 1990's DOS program. I'm
sure it works well in use, but it's hardly going to attract new users
without a major facelift"

Would any sensible commercial enterprise want to save a few hundred
dollars by using something resembling an early 90's DOS product"...????

Prescott

 

Right......... gimmee the names of some well known companies using gEDA
on serious, mission critcal projects????

Prescott

 

OK Paul, are you talking from experience or what you think sounds
right....???

You say "but people who have tried it (KiCAD) say it works well"....

what people...??

Tell us about the serious projects KiCAD has been used on..?? Can you
give me the size of boards, number of layers, level of technology,
value of projects...etc.

Prescott