When I designed my first boards the PCB layouts were taken care of by a team of young girls laying out tracks on transparencies with black stick tape working over light tables.
I'm not competely stuck on autorouting. I have purchased many software packages over the years, and for the past few I have used expresspcb, mostly because they were convenient to get actual boards in hand.
That said, the lack of decent autorouting bumps up the need for decent editing. My single very biggest problem with diptrace isn't necessarily that the autorouter leaves some things to be desired; it is that the manual editing sucks. I'm not complaining about my purchase, I just don't recall having so much issue when I evaluated it (but I didn't get into that level of editing with the trial either).
The money I spent on the software is tiny compared to the hours of time I have invested. It was worth the money to rule it out.
I didn't start the thread to complain about that- I started the thread to see what other real people were using, and why. I bought diptrace, and after spending a ton of time with it, I don't like it. I now want to buy something better, so I asked.
I think the problem is that there are not many people around who have invested hundreds of hours in getting familiar with each of many PCB packages. Seems that generally people land on some PCB suite, spend ages learning how to make it do what they want, then don't feel inclined to expend all that effort again learning other ones.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to invest hundreds of hours into learning my way around something it had better be Free, Open Source and cross platform so that I don't have any issues using it in the future. Unless there really is no such option. So KiCad it is for me.
LOL.. heater.. I remember those days. and your right. the girls/ladies that did that work were usually great to work with. thats how the first IC's were done also. My first job where i got an actual paycheck was erasing stuff with those giant electric erasers on the weekends.. i was 12 or 13 i think.
im talking more about the when CAD took over the market. it could just be happen-stance that all of of the PCB layout guys I have met are grumpy old men..
also.. I think i read a stat that said something like 60% of board designers are over 50. If that is true, there will be a real shortage in the near futrue.
and I agree with you about using kicad. that is what I would use.
As far as CAD tools, I think PCB design tools are way behind. I haven't found any that are actually what I would call good at actual CAD work. IMHO.
This software fights most attempts to edit existing art, and I am very much sick of it screwing up work that I have explicitly locked.
That would drive me nuts too.
A direct Failure to lock sounds simple to fix, but you need to check to confirm it is not some context issue, and also confirm it is a common user problem (ie not some simple buried setting)
ie hard to believe lock always fails to work, but I can believe their test coverage is less than ideal.
If you have the patience, you would need to find trigger cases and submit examples, then wait for a fix. That could be months.
Mentor PADS is a package that does lock traces and has a good shove & autotrouter, but may be pushing your '5 times as much' envelope.
I just got the quote from Pulsonix... he should have given me a couple days to decide if I even like it. Yes, it is expensive to purchase, and expensive to maintain.
I find it bothersome that software makers hobble their product based on pricing. "For $1000, you can have 1000 holes and 2 layers, for $2000, you can have 2000 holes and 4 layers" etc...(not the actual quote he sent me)
It would never even occur to me to do that. Maybe for hardware (obviously), but not for a straight software package. That said, I understand that they have to pay the bills.
I find it bothersome that software makers hobble their product based on pricing.
Bothersome indeed. It's been standard practice for decades now. Heck I have a Windows XP "Professional" CD here. I'm sure that cost more than what we normally get on a laptop or whatever.
Ask yourself. If you are going to invest millions into paying a bunch of people to write some code, how are you going price the end product?
I think the problem is that there are not many people around who have invested hundreds of hours in getting familiar with each of many PCB packages. Seems that generally people land on some PCB suite, spend ages learning how to make it do what they want, then don't feel inclined to expend all that effort again learning other ones.
My first few layouts were done on transparancies with black pads, tape, and photo reduction. When I switched from Z80/CPM to PC/Win3.1 I started using Paint (or was it Paintbrush back then?) for the initial layout, then went to pads, tape, transparancies, and photoreduction for the finished product. Very tedious for more than a few chips, but the initial layout in Paint saved so much time that I still use it today even though I have a choice of several schematic/pcb programs for the final layout.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to invest hundreds of hours into learning my way around something it had better be Free, Open Source and cross platform so that I don't have any issues using it in the future. Unless there really is no such option. So KiCad it is for me.
Comments
They were brilliant. Certainly not grumpy !
That said, the lack of decent autorouting bumps up the need for decent editing. My single very biggest problem with diptrace isn't necessarily that the autorouter leaves some things to be desired; it is that the manual editing sucks. I'm not complaining about my purchase, I just don't recall having so much issue when I evaluated it (but I didn't get into that level of editing with the trial either).
The money I spent on the software is tiny compared to the hours of time I have invested. It was worth the money to rule it out.
I didn't start the thread to complain about that- I started the thread to see what other real people were using, and why. I bought diptrace, and after spending a ton of time with it, I don't like it. I now want to buy something better, so I asked.
I think the problem is that there are not many people around who have invested hundreds of hours in getting familiar with each of many PCB packages. Seems that generally people land on some PCB suite, spend ages learning how to make it do what they want, then don't feel inclined to expend all that effort again learning other ones.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to invest hundreds of hours into learning my way around something it had better be Free, Open Source and cross platform so that I don't have any issues using it in the future. Unless there really is no such option. So KiCad it is for me.
LOL.. heater.. I remember those days. and your right. the girls/ladies that did that work were usually great to work with. thats how the first IC's were done also. My first job where i got an actual paycheck was erasing stuff with those giant electric erasers on the weekends.. i was 12 or 13 i think.
im talking more about the when CAD took over the market. it could just be happen-stance that all of of the PCB layout guys I have met are grumpy old men..
also.. I think i read a stat that said something like 60% of board designers are over 50. If that is true, there will be a real shortage in the near futrue.
and I agree with you about using kicad. that is what I would use.
As far as CAD tools, I think PCB design tools are way behind. I haven't found any that are actually what I would call good at actual CAD work. IMHO.
good day all.
That would drive me nuts too.
A direct Failure to lock sounds simple to fix, but you need to check to confirm it is not some context issue, and also confirm it is a common user problem (ie not some simple buried setting)
ie hard to believe lock always fails to work, but I can believe their test coverage is less than ideal.
If you have the patience, you would need to find trigger cases and submit examples, then wait for a fix. That could be months.
Mentor PADS is a package that does lock traces and has a good shove & autotrouter, but may be pushing your '5 times as much' envelope.
I find it bothersome that software makers hobble their product based on pricing. "For $1000, you can have 1000 holes and 2 layers, for $2000, you can have 2000 holes and 4 layers" etc...(not the actual quote he sent me)
It would never even occur to me to do that. Maybe for hardware (obviously), but not for a straight software package. That said, I understand that they have to pay the bills.
Ask yourself. If you are going to invest millions into paying a bunch of people to write some code, how are you going price the end product?
.. but these days hardware is mostly software
Just saw a release on new Rhode & Schwartz Scopes, 60MHz~500MHz, and the Bandwidth upgrade is via software key... for significant $$$ adder.
Amen to that.