Getting into pcb design.

[Roger_the_Dodger]

I want to get into pcb design but there is a bewildering amount of PCBCAD packages out there. They vary from free to many thousands of pounds.
Do I really need to spend that amount of money for a decent package.

Had a look on ebay and cheapest is PCBCAD51 for ÂŁ4-99.
Seems to do a lot for the money.

A mate suggested KI-CAD which I had a quick look at. While it has excellent libraries their website suggested latest versions haven't been debugged fully yet.

I had a brief encounter with Easy-PC many years ago but that is like ÂŁ400 ish now.

 

[Marke]

Quite a few of us are fans of Diptrace as a low cost and intuitive option. Part creation and flow from schematic to pcb design work well and make quite a bit of sense. It is my go to recommendation for newcomers.

I've tried KiCad a few times but always end up moving back to the 6 layer license I have for Diptrace. Learning curve is steeper in my experience than diptrace but it has a large community that love it and it is very well featured.

At work I use Allegro. It has feature sets that are very nice for routing high density/speed design but I don't do anything that advanced at home. The learning curve is very steep and unless you have coworkers who are knowledgeable it will take months to become reasonably efficient. Not sure on cost but I assume it is ~10k per network licence for all the features.

Rough summary: Diptrace and Kicad are great low/free options. Diptrace taking the crown on usability and kicad has larger feature set that you most likely won't need for quite a while.

Mark

 

[Tim Williams]

KiCAD has a large user base and active development. It may be buggy, but
you will find they all are, to varying (never unnoticeable) degrees.
Difference is, they're actually interested in fixing them. (If you find too
many bothersome bugs in the stable branch, try the nightly builds.)

After that, I would suggest Circuit Maker/Studio (I don't know the
difference..), or EAGLE (which is not free anymore, but it's not like it's
hard to find downloads of the free version).

There's a number of vendor-locked and web-based ones too, but I wouldn't
recommend getting into that habit.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Design
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/

"Roger_the_Dodger" <cresswellavenue@talktalk.net> wrote in message
news:5d743c45-8fea-439b-9571-c11ba563f333@googlegroups.com...
I want to get into pcb design but there is a bewildering amount of PCBCAD
packages out there. They vary from free to many thousands of pounds.
Do I really need to spend that amount of money for a decent package.

Had a look on ebay and cheapest is PCBCAD51 for ÂŁ4-99.
Seems to do a lot for the money.

A mate suggested KI-CAD which I had a quick look at. While it has excellent
libraries their website suggested latest versions haven't been debugged
fully yet.

I had a brief encounter with Easy-PC many years ago but that is like ÂŁ400
ish now.

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

søndag den 2. juni 2019 kl. 04.04.45 UTC+2 skrev Roger_the_Dodger:

I want to get into pcb design but there is a bewildering amount of PCBCAD packages out there. They vary from free to many thousands of pounds.
Do I really need to spend that amount of money for a decent package.

Had a look on ebay and cheapest is PCBCAD51 for ÂŁ4-99.
Seems to do a lot for the money.

A mate suggested KI-CAD which I had a quick look at. While it has excellent libraries their website suggested latest versions haven't been debugged fully yet.

I had a brief encounter with Easy-PC many years ago but that is like ÂŁ400 ish now.

Kicad works great and there are plenty of tutorials on youtube that will
take you from installing it to having an assembled pcb in your hand

 

[Chris]

On Sunday, 2 June 2019 12:04:45 UTC+10, Roger_the_Dodger wrote:

I want to get into pcb design but there is a bewildering amount of PCBCAD packages out there. They vary from free to many thousands of pounds.
Do I really need to spend that amount of money for a decent package.

Had a look on ebay and cheapest is PCBCAD51 for ÂŁ4-99.
Seems to do a lot for the money.

A mate suggested KI-CAD which I had a quick look at. While it has excellent libraries their website suggested latest versions haven't been debugged fully yet.

I had a brief encounter with Easy-PC many years ago but that is like ÂŁ400 ish now.

The RS-branded DesignSpark PCB is free and quite capable. I've done several (albeit simple) designs with it. Requires a sign-up to the web site to get an activation key but there's no cost involved.

FWIW
--
Cheers,
Chris.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 10:04:45 PM UTC-4, Roger_the_Dodger wrote:

I want to get into pcb design but there is a bewildering amount of PCBCAD packages out there. They vary from free to many thousands of pounds.
Do I really need to spend that amount of money for a decent package.

Had a look on ebay and cheapest is PCBCAD51 for ÂŁ4-99.
Seems to do a lot for the money.

A mate suggested KI-CAD which I had a quick look at. While it has excellent libraries their website suggested latest versions haven't been debugged fully yet.

I had a brief encounter with Easy-PC many years ago but that is like ÂŁ400 ish now.

I've used a package called FreePCB which is very nice to use. The freepcb.com website has the latest version the original author used and it is pretty bullet proof with no bugs that I can recall. You have to install the original version and then install the update. It works fine under Windows 10 or any other version, but if you use a version that won't allow you to have data files in the program_files directory you may need to manually edit the .ini file to point to another location or install the program in another directory.

It has the basic features you need. Not matched or controlled impedance support, no parts at 45°. Otherwise it works very well. There is a forum on the web site, but I don't think it will allow a new member to sign up.. We have a yahoo group which I am thinking of changing to Groups.io. One very supportive member of the old group doesn't like Yahoo's requirements to sign up.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 6/1/19 10:04 PM, Roger_the_Dodger wrote:

I want to get into pcb design but there is a bewildering amount of
PCBCAD packages out there. They vary from free to many thousands of
pounds. Do I really need to spend that amount of money for a decent
package.

Had a look on ebay and cheapest is PCBCAD51 for ÂŁ4-99. Seems to do a
lot for the money.

A mate suggested KI-CAD which I had a quick look at. While it has
excellent libraries their website suggested latest versions haven't
been debugged fully yet.

I had a brief encounter with Easy-PC many years ago but that is like
ÂŁ400 ish now.

There's a crippleware version of Altium Designer, called CircuitStudio.
It costs $500 for a perpetual license. By all appearances it isn't
badly crippled at all, and that's cheaper than Diptrace. It has good
import/export capabilities as well.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[mkr5000]

I've been through this process a dozen times and a package you never hear of and seriously under rated is Sprint layout (Germany). Unreal how user friendly and what it can do for 50 bucks. I use it and nothing else.