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Eh, Eagle in this day in age? If you're going cheap, I'd stick with KiCAD. It's unintuitive, like GIMP vs Photoshop, but gets the job done with no restrictions
by krapht 10y ago
Eh, Eagle in this day in age? If you're going cheap, I'd stick with KiCAD. It's unintuitive, like GIMP vs Photoshop, but gets the job done with no restrictions on functionality. I've also heard decent things about CircuitMaker, but never used it.
If you have any academic links at all though, or don't mind piracy, I'd grab a student edition of Altium Designer. Solidworks too if you can get it for mechanical modeling. If you ever make it big, these are the tools you want to learn and know how to use. You don't mention anything about a good debugger - this is crucial! If you work with ARM the Segger JLink is the gold standard.
Also you should probably mention where to get cheap stencils, like Osh Stencils etc. With all the cheap parts going to extra small packages, stencils are a godsend. Or, just have your prototype made in China at any of the small board-houses - quite cheap as well compared to the time you might spend doing board assembly.
Just my quick 2c.
- nearengine 10y agoCurious if you've heard about the sale of CadSoft to AutoDesk, I was about to write Eagle off myself but I'm hoping they give it a little love. http://www.premierfarnell.com/content/sale-cadsoft-0 http://www.premierfarnell.com/content/sale-cadsoft-0
- krapht 10y agoYeah, I heard about it. I think Eagle is a sinking ship. The low-end PCB design software market is going to be swallowed up by KiCAD, which has been getting much better ever since CERN decided to sponsor it. Can't beat free and unencumbered. Thank the European taxpayer and move on, IMO. The market is going to be KiCAD at the bottom, Altium Designer / Pads / Orcad in the middle, then Zuken / Allegro / Expedition at the top.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- marssaxman 10y agoI'm so glad you mentioned that! KiCAD was infuriating last time I tried it. I considered getting involved and trying to contribute, but ended up moving out of PCB design and back into system software instead. It's good to know that the project is getting some real investment and that the whole open-source promise is working out once again. I'll take another look.
- kqr2 10y agoInterview with Autodesk about the CadSoft EAGLE purchase : https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/07/05/exclusive-interview-with-autodesk-about-the-cadsoft-eagle-purchase-autodesk-cadsofttech-technolomaniac/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/07/05/exclusive-interview-wit... Matt Berggren (Director of Autodesk Circuits) is a big supporter of the DIY / maker community.
- wgj 10y agoThe team at CERN has made big improvements to KiCad, including the push and shove router: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCG4daPvuVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCG4daPvuVI Another good reason to think about KiCad is if you care about open formats (vs. Altium for example.) CERN's own statement [1]: "We think that KiCad can do to PCB design what the gcc compiler did to software: ensure there are no artificial barriers to sharing so that design and development knowledge can flow more freely." [1] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki
- akiselev 10y agoIronically, CERN has one of the best open source part libraries for Altium.
- cruser 10y agoThat's really cool of them. Where can I find this library? Googling led me to the two sites below, but there's no download location in them. [1] http://ts-dep-dem.web.cern.ch/ts-dep-dem/services/library/ http://ts-dep-dem.web.cern.ch/ts-dep-dem/services/library/ [2] http://information-technology.web.cern.ch/services/software/altium-designer http://information-technology.web.cern.ch/services/software/...
- cruser 10y agoI found a 460MB CERN_ALTIUM_LIB_july_2014.7z file on torrent sites. Is this what you're talking about?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bizzleDawg 10y agoI've used KiCAD for a bunch of 2 layer and 4 layer prototypes for my company. The GIMP vs. Photoshop comparison is very accurate in my opinion!
- monocasa 10y agoHoly shit, that JLink is expensive. What does it get me more than the JTAG<->FTDI<->OpenOCD<->GDB setup that I have currently, who's boards cost my ~$100 in super low volume?
- jotux 10y agoJLink is updated very quickly and works with every arm platform and IDE imaginable.
- jpwright 10y agoFWIW -- for non-commercial uses you can get a J-Link EDU for about $70. The hardware is identical to J-Link BASE.
- archimedespi 10y agoJust grab a cheap Chinese clone off of Ebay. They're pretty much completely functionally identical in my experience.
- akiselev 10y agoI'm very much against software piracy but if you're starting out in electrical engineering, you are doing an absolute disservice by not using a pirated version of Altium. Not only is it basically the industry standard (Cadence, Orcad, etc are mostly propped up by legacy clients, especially in aerospace and defence) but its interface and features are leaps and bounds beyond anything else. Pretty much all ECAD software is a naive port of the pen and paper schematic design process to mouse and keyboard (it's still called "schematic capture" in contrast to "PCB design") but Altium has moved far beyond that, especially with the introduction of cloud features in the last five years (like an online repository for user and vendor created footprints). The field of electrical engineering has been extremely averse to the ideas of open source but for many reasons, Altium's online resources among them, that is finally starting to change. Eagle does have a large community with companies like Sparkfun and Adafruit but those pale in comparison to the community forming around Altium, which is made up of a large number of vendors and professionals who are starting to grasp the benefits of sharing data. Considering how much the package costs and how much Altium benefits from the growing community, I honestly don't think they'd mind if you pirated the software a few years before you could afford it.
- jpm_sd 10y agoAltium also recently developed a free (!) entry-level version, CircuitMaker (http://circuitmaker.com/ http://circuitmaker.com/).
- lifekaizen 10y agoWe looked at CircuitMaker but it appears that you can't have private designs - they are all public. So fine for open source but difficult to use for product dev.
- desdiv 10y ago>it's still called "schematic capture" in contrast to "PCB design" So what is it called when I capture a schematic in order to do some SPICE simulations on it? "PCB design minus the designing PCB part"? "Capture" in this context means "the act of putting information in a form that a computer can use or read"¹, so I don't see how the phrase "schematic capture" is archaic when it mentions computers in its definition. ¹http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capture http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capture
- Xunxi 10y agoWhat are some of the reputable "small board-houses"? Any recommendations?
- crshults 10y agoI always had good results with Advanced Circuits out in Colorado, but this is over a decade ago now.
- skaevola 10y agoOSH Park is very cheap and good for bare boards: https://oshpark.com/ https://oshpark.com/ If you want somebody to populate the boards for you, I love Macrofab: https://macrofab.com/ https://macrofab.com/
- pmorici 10y agoFirst I've heard of Macrofab, have you ever tried circuithub? I've been using the latter and wonder how they compared. Edit: just checked out Macrofab and they seem to be more expensive than circuithub at least for the couple example projects I threw into the quoting engine.
- skslater 10y agoOSH Park are also beginner friendly. Allowing you to import your design directly from Eagle rather than having to generate individual layer files and also not requiring you to specify copper thickness, board finish, etc.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agoI'm going to throw in a plug for OSH Stencils. Cheap, high quality PCB stencils. I'm never going back to a syringe full of paste! Had a QFN-64 that I hated doing because of that.
- elijahparker 10y agoFor simpler prototype boards I use oshpark.com, but a big downside is no electrical testing. For more important/complex stuff, I've been very happy with jetpcb.com in Taiwan. Full e-test and I get the boards in about 5 days
- zachrose 10y agoThis may not be pleasant in practice, but is there anything that offers a text-based language for describing schematics and/or PCBs? (Similar to the way OpenSCAD has a DSL/Scheme for 3D modelling?) From what I understand, VHDL etc. are for FPGAs and ICs, I'm just talking about boards with components.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agoAbsolutely nothing is stopping anyone from writing Gerber files by hand. It's just a flat text file with a well documented format. Likewise, Eagle (and I am sure, KiCad) files are text based.