Anyone used Eagle Professional PCB editor?

[Roger Lascelles]

<null@void.com> wrote in message news:d8iv59$1pl2$1@otis.netspace.net.au...

Daniel Franklin wrote:

I've been using the database file system without fault. The the only
problems I have heard about were caused by the versions of MS ODBC
drivers being out of date.

99se+sp6 is a very stable program when run on the correct operating
system (win2K or above) with the correct resources. Join the techserve
mailing list and you will find many, many happy users of this program.

Protel V3 was an abomination however.

There are thousands of happy users who love Protel, who learn all the quirks
and never think twice about it.

I recognise that, but I am among the group who find Protel to be shoddy,
weird, offensive, stupid. I've gone to the help forums, read documentation
and I just don't see how Protel can charge $ for this amateurish job. Its
not so bad if you use Protel a lot, because you remember the tricks, but I
only do a board every 6 months.

By contrast, I can sit down to all sorts of programs and pick them up after
6 months.

Roger Lascelles

 

[David L. Jones]

The Real Andy wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 01:48:50 +1000, Bob Parker
bobpdeletethis@despammed.com> wrote:

Thanks Dave,
Yeah, our Protel 99SE has been upgraded to SP6 which is the latest
one on the Altium website.
"A few issues" seems to be a big understatement. All the people
using that program where I work know it to be very unstable and prone
to coming up with all kinds of weird errors.
One time I told one of the blokes "99SE crashed twice on me this
morning". His comment was "Only twice?" and he was serious. He backs
up his Protel files every 2 minutes just to be sure of not losing much
work when it does something stupid. I'm an optimist... I back up about
every 5 minutes!
We completely re-installed the program and SP6 from scratch and we
just replaced the 2.8GHz Celeron motherboard/128MB ATI video card with
a 3GHz P4/256MB Nvidia video card in the despairing hope that 99SE
would become stable enough for me to finish the project I'm working
on. That didn't significantly help either.
It finally turned out that 99SE had subtly corrupted the .ddb file.
Of course using its "File repair" function didn't make the slightest
difference. Only time-wasting trial-and-error methods identified which
components on just one page of the schematic were invisibly corrupted,
and I was able to fix it (I think/hope).
I'm only really annoyed because I was beginning to wonder if 99SE
was going to lose me my job because I was wasting so much time trying
to find the problem and the manager was running out of patience.

Thanks to you and everyone else for your thoughts about Eagle. If
it's stable and not so quirky that I can't get my brain around it, it
has got to be better than 99SE!

Regards
Bob

The number one tip when using 99se, do not use the database function.
That will be your biggest downfall. That aside, Protel99se is fine.

Pre-SP6 I was of the same opinion. I simply wouldn't trust the database
functionality and ran with seperate files. However since moving to the
database under SP6 I wouldn't go back. One file for everything has many
advantages, especially within our organisation. One thing with the
database though, you MUST use the Auto Compact database option,
otherwise the file gets bigger and bigger every time you save. If you
are a habitual saver like I am then it gets big real quick. I've seen a
nearly 100MB file for a small simple board!

It's amazing the difference people seem to have with 99SE. Everyone I
know swears by 99SE and has never had a problem with it, yet others on
here seem to have no end of problems.

Dave

 

Roger Lascelles wrote:

There are thousands of happy users who love Protel, who learn all the quirks
and never think twice about it.

I recognise that, but I am among the group who find Protel to be shoddy,
weird, offensive, stupid. I've gone to the help forums, read documentation
and I just don't see how Protel can charge $ for this amateurish job. Its
not so bad if you use Protel a lot, because you remember the tricks, but I
only do a board every 6 months.

By contrast, I can sit down to all sorts of programs and pick them up after
6 months.

Roger Lascelles

Fair enough. I do agree its price is incredibly inflated, and there's no

way we can justify the expense of upgrading to Protel DXP.

 

[Alex Gibson]

"Bob Parker" <bobpdeletethis@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:bulja19juqfnhvehftcqev4mk21k9eocu8@4ax.com...

Hi,
I've just wasted about a fortnight at work, all thanks to the
Protel 99SE schematic/PCB program going berserk, corrupting its own
files, being impossibly non-intuitive and generally doing everything
it can to make me want to smash my monitor out of frustration.
I refuse to ever do another schematic and PCB layout using that
woeful bugware (in my opinion).
Has anyone here used Eagle Professional for doing multi-layer SMD
artworks? I'm thinking seriously of going to it from Protel, and would
like some feedback from actual users before I go any further.
Thanks.

Regards,
Bob

You can remap the keys to be the same as protel or whatever else you like.


There are newsgroups for eagle on their server
news.cadsoft.de

There is a book on eagle as well.
Have a copy here somewhere but I haven't read it yet
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/007142783X/qid=1118657643/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-4467631-0310254?v=glance&s=books&n=507846>

Same guy who has writen a few basic stamp books.

Make sure to have a search around the cadsoft web site
for extra libraries , user projects etc
There is a script file that will allow eagle to import protel99se files.
Think its under ulps.

Alex

 

[The Real Andy]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 15:03:12 +1000, "Roger Lascelles"
<despam_rklasl@aanet.com.au> wrote:

null@void.com> wrote in message news:d8iv59$1pl2$1@otis.netspace.net.au...
Daniel Franklin wrote:

I've been using the database file system without fault. The the only
problems I have heard about were caused by the versions of MS ODBC
drivers being out of date.

99se+sp6 is a very stable program when run on the correct operating
system (win2K or above) with the correct resources. Join the techserve
mailing list and you will find many, many happy users of this program.

Protel V3 was an abomination however.

There are thousands of happy users who love Protel, who learn all the quirks
and never think twice about it.

I recognise that, but I am among the group who find Protel to be shoddy,
weird, offensive, stupid. I've gone to the help forums, read documentation
and I just don't see how Protel can charge $ for this amateurish job. Its
not so bad if you use Protel a lot, because you remember the tricks, but I
only do a board every 6 months.

By contrast, I can sit down to all sorts of programs and pick them up after
6 months.

There is two choices for professionals when it comes to CAD packages
for electronics, Protel and Cadence, the rest are toys. When you use
protel to it maximum capabilities, there is only one better, Cadence.
It is extremly powerful. If you can handle using the toys, go for it,
you are probably a back yard operation anyway.

BTW, I have been using protel since dos to 99se. 99se is the best i
have used, the most powerful and the most stable. IF you blame Protel
for their ddb, then go and have a whinge to MS because Access
databases are shit and so are both there native drivers and the ODBC
drivers. When 99se was developed, there was JET (access) and sybase
anywhere. Sybase would have added another $300 to the cost.

 

[Bob Parker]

Hi Alex,
Thanks for all the really useful information! I just went to the
Eagle site and downloaded:

protel2eagle.zip 56,468 7,207 Thu Dec 12 09:58:28 2002
This ULP will convert a netlist in Protel .NET format to an Eagle
script and PCB layout.
Uploaded by Tom Connelly <tconnelly at blueyonder.co.uk> from
Cardonald College

I hope this is the one you meant. I'll check it out the moment I
get some time. This might be the answer to my prayers in many ways.

Regards
Bob



"Alex Gibson" <news@alxx.net> wrote:

You can remap the keys to be the same as protel or whatever else you like.


There are newsgroups for eagle on their server
news.cadsoft.de

There is a book on eagle as well.
Have a copy here somewhere but I haven't read it yet
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/007142783X/qid=1118657643/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-4467631-0310254?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Same guy who has writen a few basic stamp books.

Make sure to have a search around the cadsoft web site
for extra libraries , user projects etc
There is a script file that will allow eagle to import protel99se files.
Think its under ulps.

Alex

 

[Bob Parker]

My thoughts exactly.
Protel and some other companies seem to have the attitude that
anything which is intuitive and straightforward and doesn't have you
constantly jumping through all their hoops has something wrong with
it. They equate simplicity with "deficiency" and make it as complex
and obscure as possible to do almost everything.
In 99SE You have to dig down through about 3 levels of menus just
to turn layers on and off, for example.
Maybe I shouldn't put this in a public forum, but Altium sent us an
evaluation copy of their latest Protel/DXP(?) 2004 package on CD. On
three out of four PCs we tried it on, the installation froze up. All
were fast Celeron machines running XP Pro with lots of RAM. Only a
1GHz Pentium 3 running XP Pro would work with it. For some reason we
weren't the slightest bit surprised. Altium were. They said it was
fine on their Celeron laptop.


Bob



"Roger Lascelles" <despam_rklasl@aanet.com.au> wrote:

There are thousands of happy users who love Protel, who learn all the quirks
and never think twice about it.

I recognise that, but I am among the group who find Protel to be shoddy,
weird, offensive, stupid. I've gone to the help forums, read documentation
and I just don't see how Protel can charge $ for this amateurish job. Its
not so bad if you use Protel a lot, because you remember the tricks, but I
only do a board every 6 months.

By contrast, I can sit down to all sorts of programs and pick them up after
6 months.

Roger Lascelles

 

[Bob Parker]

null@void.com wrote:

Fair enough. I do agree its price is incredibly inflated, and there's no
way we can justify the expense of upgrading to Protel DXP.

That's exactly what management in the company I work for said, too.

 

[Bob Parker]

Some swear by 99SE, and others swear at it!
I was actually going to print out a strip of 99SE icons in colour
and glue them to my packets of headache pills. I usually have a
headache after 1 - 2 hours of fighting with that program.
We'll probably never know why people like me seem to have constant
problems with 99SE, and others have a pleasant experience.
For example, I've sometimes been plagued by phantom net lines on
the PCB, which terminate at little spurious dots which are only
visible sometimes.
From trial and error I found that doing a File Repair then deleting
the tracks near those phantom lines makes them go away.
But you gotta ask: what kind of a program has a file repair
function built in, to fix problems that it creates?!

Regards
Bob




"David L. Jones" <altzone@gmail.com> wrote:

It's amazing the difference people seem to have with 99SE. Everyone I
know swears by 99SE and has never had a problem with it, yet others on
here seem to have no end of problems.

Dave

 

[budgie]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 00:48:53 +1000, Bob Parker <bobpdeletethis@despammed.com>
wrote:

My thoughts exactly.
Protel and some other companies seem to have the attitude that
anything which is intuitive and straightforward and doesn't have you
constantly jumping through all their hoops has something wrong with
it. They equate simplicity with "deficiency" and make it as complex
and obscure as possible to do almost everything.
In 99SE You have to dig down through about 3 levels of menus just
to turn layers on and off, for example.
Maybe I shouldn't put this in a public forum, but Altium sent us an
evaluation copy of their latest Protel/DXP(?) 2004 package on CD. On
three out of four PCs we tried it on, the installation froze up. All
were fast Celeron machines running XP Pro with lots of RAM. Only a
1GHz Pentium 3 running XP Pro would work with it. For some reason we
weren't the slightest bit surprised. Altium were. They said it was
fine on their Celeron laptop.

which was probably the full extent of their in-house testing ....

 

[budgie]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 00:57:38 +1000, Bob Parker <bobpdeletethis@despammed.com>
wrote:

Some swear by 99SE, and others swear at it!
I was actually going to print out a strip of 99SE icons in colour
and glue them to my packets of headache pills. I usually have a
headache after 1 - 2 hours of fighting with that program.
We'll probably never know why people like me seem to have constant
problems with 99SE, and others have a pleasant experience.
For example, I've sometimes been plagued by phantom net lines on
the PCB, which terminate at little spurious dots which are only
visible sometimes.
From trial and error I found that doing a File Repair then deleting
the tracks near those phantom lines makes them go away.
But you gotta ask: what kind of a program has a file repair
function built in, to fix problems that it creates?!

FFS don't mention that to MicroSloth - their implementation would add even more
bugs.

And aren't we all glad that MS don't produce a PCB package (shudder at the
thought).

 

[Johnny]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 00:50:21 +1000, Bob Parker
<bobpdeletethis@despammed.com> wrote:

null@void.com wrote:

Fair enough. I do agree its price is incredibly inflated, and there's no
way we can justify the expense of upgrading to Protel DXP.

That's exactly what management in the company I work for said, too.

My company recently bought a number of Protel DXP 2004 upgrades
because Altium were about to stop issuing upgrade licences from 99SE.
However so far there is no decision to start using it because:

1) Many of our workstations are slower than 2GHz, or with less 512Mb
RAM. They are too slow to run it properly, especially with large
project files or complex simulations.

2) It seems far too complex and no one wants to suffer the
productivity loss.

regards,
Johnny.

 

[Bob Parker]

Just looking at the complexity of the DXP startup screen is enough
to make me not want to use it.

Regards
Bob



Johnny <john_wr@NOSPAM.hotmail.com.> wrote:

2) It seems far too complex and no one wants to suffer the
productivity loss.

regards,
Johnny.

 

[Bob Parker]

What a thought.... as scary as having the flight control systems on
an aircraft running Windoze, like in this picture:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bobpar/WindowsPanel.jpg

Regards
Bob




budgie <me@privacy.net> wrote:

FFS don't mention that to MicroSloth - their implementation would add even more
bugs.

And aren't we all glad that MS don't produce a PCB package (shudder at the
thought).

 

[Trevor]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 15:26:46 +1000, Clifford Heath
<no@spam.please.net> wrote:
Yes, I tried those Video drivers, and they don't work either!

Work have moved to compacs with LCDs and since then I've been unable
to run the s/w on those machines with any drivers I've found.

Trev

 

[Alex Gibson]

"Bob Parker" <bobpdeletethis@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:ha6ra1969qm9i24dq4dutlo6pk7huu711q@4ax.com...

Hi Alex,
Thanks for all the really useful information! I just went to the
Eagle site and downloaded:

protel2eagle.zip 56,468 7,207 Thu Dec 12 09:58:28 2002
This ULP will convert a netlist in Protel .NET format to an Eagle
script and PCB layout.
Uploaded by Tom Connelly <tconnelly at blueyonder.co.uk> from
Cardonald College

I hope this is the one you meant. I'll check it out the moment I
get some time. This might be the answer to my prayers in many ways.

Regards
Bob

Yes.Think thats the one.

Also to export a netlist to protel format

netlist_protel.ulp in the Download area, ULP directory.

Eagle power tools under misc
can import dxf files limited demo available also other ulps for this as
well.

This mini faq may be useful
http://users3.ev1.net/~rpauly/frequently%20asked%20questions.pdf

Alex

 

[Bob Parker]

Thanks again Alex,
Ironically I'm flat out busy making up for all that lost time now
that 99SE seems to be in one of its relatively good moods (isn't
crashing or bringing up "Floating Point Division By Zero" messages as
it throws components off the schematic page).
I'll follow up your latest suggestion very soon, because I really
want to use Eagle for all my future designs!

Regards,
Bob




"Alex Gibson" <news@alxx.net> wrote:

Yes.Think thats the one.

Also to export a netlist to protel format

netlist_protel.ulp in the Download area, ULP directory.

Eagle power tools under misc
can import dxf files limited demo available also other ulps for this as
well.

This mini faq may be useful
http://users3.ev1.net/~rpauly/frequently%20asked%20questions.pdf

Alex

 

[Bob Parker]

Just as a little followup, 99SE hasn't crashed on me even once in
about a fortnight of intensively using it on the 3GHz P4 motherboard
which replaced the 2.8GHz Celeron one. Yes, it's done its "phantom
netline" trick once, but that's about all so far.
BTW, the Celeron had 512MB of RAM and so does the new board. The
Celeron was running XP Home and the P4's running XP Pro. Apparently
99SE is very cranky about what kind of machine it's installed in.
However, 99SE continues to be highly irritating to use, all the
more so because I've played around with Eagle quite a lot and have
been spoiled by its intuitive-ness. My next project will definitely be
done with Eagle.

Cheers and thanks again to everyone for your helpful/interesting
comments!

Bob



"David L. Jones" <altzone@gmail.com> wrote:

It's amazing the difference people seem to have with 99SE. Everyone I
know swears by 99SE and has never had a problem with it, yet others on
here seem to have no end of problems.

Dave

 

[dmm]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:16:28 +1000, Bob Parker <bobpdeletethis@despammed.com> wrote:

Just as a little followup, 99SE hasn't crashed on me even once in
about a fortnight of intensively using it on the 3GHz P4 motherboard
which replaced the 2.8GHz Celeron one. Yes, it's done its "phantom
netline" trick once, but that's about all so far.
BTW, the Celeron had 512MB of RAM and so does the new board. The
Celeron was running XP Home and the P4's running XP Pro. Apparently
99SE is very cranky about what kind of machine it's installed in.
However, 99SE continues to be highly irritating to use, all the
more so because I've played around with Eagle quite a lot and have
been spoiled by its intuitive-ness. My next project will definitely be
done with Eagle.

Cheers and thanks again to everyone for your helpful/interesting
comments!

Bob

Bob, are you running Service Pack 6 ?

"David L. Jones" <altzone@gmail.com> wrote:

It's amazing the difference people seem to have with 99SE. Everyone I
know swears by 99SE and has never had a problem with it, yet others on
here seem to have no end of problems.

Dave

 

[Bob Parker]

dmm <dmmilne_REMOVE_@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

Bob, are you running Service Pack 6 ?

Yes, I certainly am.