3 ms·

Interesting. I really enjoy manual routing though. For a small board it can be a fun game :)

the-dude 7y ago
I self taught PCB design a couple of years ago, settled for KiCAD and freerouting(.net). After the prototype revisions, it was very easy to move to 100% SMD and let the autorouter do its job ( design for manufacturing ).
- roland35 7y ago
  My only problem with the auto router (in EAGLECAD at least) is that it ruined your undo/redo history! So basically if it screwed up you had to tear the entire thing up, or go back to an old save. It still is a huge time saver though!
  - the-dude 7y ago
    It is said that each and every EDA tool sucks in its own ways.
    - abrugsch 7y ago
      I concur! They are all highly complex pieces of software each with years of design cruft and their own foibles. I've yet to try any of the "heavyweight" ones like Altium because I don't have a megacorp footing the bill, but certainly of The free ones they all have issues. I personally like and use kicad but agree that it still has some serious usability issues (though a LOT of progress has been made with >5.0) it has some features that i wouldn't give up for the world (push and shove routing for one) and some I despise (library management still blows) and on balance I prefer it to the restrictions of eagle (free) but for knocking up a quick board, easy eda is pretty handy to have on hand wherever I may be that I can't install the others on. it's full featured enough to not suck as much as (say) fritzing
      - klingonopera 7y ago
        I designed a PCB with KiCad in 2014-2016, with version 4.x and then had to make another one in late 2017, and gave KiCad another spin and am absolutely mind-blown as to how awesome it has become. I even opened up my old designs from '14 and they just worked, some complaining about an old version, but it got all the footprints (lots of custom ones, too!) right and I could just pick up and continue. I'm not sure how KiCad scales up to the $10k+ EDAs, but I am thoroughly amazed at it's quality and useability, especially considering that it's FOSS.
    - roland35 7y ago
      It is known
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      I had the opportunity to try out a bunch of them, including Altium in the late aughts and I was struck by how much worse the user interface got the more expensive the EDA software was. Eagle, free for student use, was the only one where when you used the mouse wheel to zoom it zoomed with respect to the mouse pointer location instead of the center of the screen. If they supported mouse wheel zooming at all.

I self taught PCB design a couple of years ago, settled for KiCAD and freerouting(.net). After the prototype revisions, it was very easy to move to 100% SMD and let the autorouter do its job ( design for manufacturing ).

roland35 7y ago
My only problem with the auto router (in EAGLECAD at least) is that it ruined your undo/redo history! So basically if it screwed up you had to tear the entire thing up, or go back to an old save. It still is a huge time saver though!
- the-dude 7y ago
  It is said that each and every EDA tool sucks in its own ways.
  - abrugsch 7y ago
    I concur! They are all highly complex pieces of software each with years of design cruft and their own foibles. I've yet to try any of the "heavyweight" ones like Altium because I don't have a megacorp footing the bill, but certainly of The free ones they all have issues. I personally like and use kicad but agree that it still has some serious usability issues (though a LOT of progress has been made with >5.0) it has some features that i wouldn't give up for the world (push and shove routing for one) and some I despise (library management still blows) and on balance I prefer it to the restrictions of eagle (free) but for knocking up a quick board, easy eda is pretty handy to have on hand wherever I may be that I can't install the others on. it's full featured enough to not suck as much as (say) fritzing
    - klingonopera 7y ago
      I designed a PCB with KiCad in 2014-2016, with version 4.x and then had to make another one in late 2017, and gave KiCad another spin and am absolutely mind-blown as to how awesome it has become. I even opened up my old designs from '14 and they just worked, some complaining about an old version, but it got all the footprints (lots of custom ones, too!) right and I could just pick up and continue. I'm not sure how KiCad scales up to the $10k+ EDAs, but I am thoroughly amazed at it's quality and useability, especially considering that it's FOSS.
  - roland35 7y ago
    It is known
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    I had the opportunity to try out a bunch of them, including Altium in the late aughts and I was struck by how much worse the user interface got the more expensive the EDA software was. Eagle, free for student use, was the only one where when you used the mouse wheel to zoom it zoomed with respect to the mouse pointer location instead of the center of the screen. If they supported mouse wheel zooming at all.