3 ms·

Unlikely, since the designs are only editable in the proprietary Eagle EDA tool.

by BuuQu9hu 10y ago

lucaspiller 10y ago
What's the best free alternative to Eagle?
- duskwuff 10y ago
  Kicad: http://kicad-pcb.org/ http://kicad-pcb.org/ There's a bit of a learning curve, but it's a highly capable EDA suite.
  - qume 10y ago
    Everyone mentions the learning curve... I just learned it myself and pretty much was up and running after an amazing and fast paced intro tutorial of about 20 mins. Maybe it used to be hard to learn because now it seems to me very logical. Just dont bother without watching a video first. I wish more people would use it so more footprints would be available, although making them from a datasheet is trivial. And fun... I dont wish bad luck on the good folk who make eagle but long live free software.
    - dfox 10y ago
      It is hard to learn when you come from Eagle or expect it to behave like "normal" Windows drawing application. But that holds for mostly any EDA package or even general purpose CADs. Biggest problem with KiCad's UI is that while it's UI is actually highly consistent when it comes to drawing itself, it's GUI is a mess (things that are only on toolbar or only in main menu, no correlation between icons in menu and on toolbars, crucial functions buried in random non-related dialog boxes, behavior and feature set changing depending on graphics backend etc.). But in comparison with various other EDA packages (including Eagle) I find the overall experience mostly consistent and logical. In comparison with one very expensive EDA package at least snap to grid works in a way that is actually usable and all KiCad windows use same GUI toolkit.
- PhilWright 10y ago
  Eagle is free as long as your boards are limited to a maximum of 100m x 80m.
  - dfox 10y ago
    You mean mm. And also, as long as you use only two layers, which given how cheap are 4-layer boards from china is pretty significant limitation, especially for project of this kind.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      Makes me wanna see a 100m x 80m board in real life. What would that be? Maybe a Core i3 in TTL? :)
      - unwind 10y ago
        More, I think. This: http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/4431173/TTL-turns-50--more-or-less--in-2014- http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/44311... shows a TTL era computer board, which seems to cram in about 300 packages in 15x15 inches. Assuming each package is at most 500 gate (medium-scale integration) with 5 transistors/gate, that's 2,500 transistors per package. So in 225 square inches we'd get 300*2500 = 750,000 transistors. The Core i7 "only" has 731 million, which converts to 975 of those giant boards. But each such board is just 0.15 square meters, and in 100x50 meters we can fit more than 33,000 of them, for billions of transistors. Of course, the max clock would not be very impressive at this scale. :)
  - mkesper 10y ago
    That's not free as in freedom 0: http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html

Unlikely, since the designs are only editable in the proprietary Eagle EDA tool.

lucaspiller 10y ago

What's the best free alternative to Eagle?

duskwuff 10y ago
Kicad: http://kicad-pcb.org/ http://kicad-pcb.org/ There's a bit of a learning curve, but it's a highly capable EDA suite.
- qume 10y ago
  Everyone mentions the learning curve... I just learned it myself and pretty much was up and running after an amazing and fast paced intro tutorial of about 20 mins. Maybe it used to be hard to learn because now it seems to me very logical. Just dont bother without watching a video first. I wish more people would use it so more footprints would be available, although making them from a datasheet is trivial. And fun... I dont wish bad luck on the good folk who make eagle but long live free software.
  - dfox 10y ago
    It is hard to learn when you come from Eagle or expect it to behave like "normal" Windows drawing application. But that holds for mostly any EDA package or even general purpose CADs. Biggest problem with KiCad's UI is that while it's UI is actually highly consistent when it comes to drawing itself, it's GUI is a mess (things that are only on toolbar or only in main menu, no correlation between icons in menu and on toolbars, crucial functions buried in random non-related dialog boxes, behavior and feature set changing depending on graphics backend etc.). But in comparison with various other EDA packages (including Eagle) I find the overall experience mostly consistent and logical. In comparison with one very expensive EDA package at least snap to grid works in a way that is actually usable and all KiCad windows use same GUI toolkit.
PhilWright 10y ago
Eagle is free as long as your boards are limited to a maximum of 100m x 80m.
- dfox 10y ago
  You mean mm. And also, as long as you use only two layers, which given how cheap are 4-layer boards from china is pretty significant limitation, especially for project of this kind.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Makes me wanna see a 100m x 80m board in real life. What would that be? Maybe a Core i3 in TTL? :)
    - unwind 10y ago
      More, I think. This: http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/4431173/TTL-turns-50--more-or-less--in-2014- http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/break-points/44311... shows a TTL era computer board, which seems to cram in about 300 packages in 15x15 inches. Assuming each package is at most 500 gate (medium-scale integration) with 5 transistors/gate, that's 2,500 transistors per package. So in 225 square inches we'd get 300*2500 = 750,000 transistors. The Core i7 "only" has 731 million, which converts to 975 of those giant boards. But each such board is just 0.15 square meters, and in 100x50 meters we can fit more than 33,000 of them, for billions of transistors. Of course, the max clock would not be very impressive at this scale. :)
- mkesper 10y ago
  That's not free as in freedom 0: http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html