The great PCB software survey 2018
Tubular
Posts: 4,702
in Propeller 2
Please respond in 2 parts,
1) Which PCB design software do you use right now, and
2) Which PCB software would you learn next, given time and incentive
This is relevant to current P2 design discussions
Thanks
Lachlan
1) Which PCB design software do you use right now, and
2) Which PCB software would you learn next, given time and incentive
This is relevant to current P2 design discussions
Thanks
Lachlan
Comments
1) Rimu
2) Kicad
2. KiCad (looked numerous times but the transition always seems too big when I just want a pcb now)
2. KiCad
2. Kicad
2 kicad
2. KiCAD
2) No need to change. CADINT is the best.
-Phil
2) Kicad
1) Mentor PADS and KiCad
2) Fluent in PADS, still ramping KiCad, using and testing/reporting on V5 nightlies.
2 Altium Designer (is being used at work...)
2a) Since I assume this poll is including cost and open source as overly weighted dominate factors, an appropriate #2 vote is KiCAD.
2b) If we are equally weighing all factors, then no contest: Altium, the respected flagship EDA software by professional designers.
I've assigned 1/2 a vote to peoples second vote. Horribly unscientific i know
Which means Phil's Cadint holds almost same share as Altium. Enjoy the moment, Phil!... it may not last
2) Verilog
I don't ever want to design a PCB again
Nobody using CADSTAR?
I worked in the CADSTAR dev team at Racal-Redac for a couple of years way back when. I have not seen anyone using it since 1999 or so. I was amazed to find, a few years ago, that CADSTAR is still developed and there is a free version:
https://www.zuken.com/en/products/pcb-design/cadstar
https://www.zuken.com/en/products/pcb-design/cadstar/resources/software/express
Despite WBA consulting's suggestion that the requirement of open source is an overly weighted dominate factor I think KiCad is the way to go for a P2 reference design. As a reference it is important that it be be openly available to as many as possible, with as few hoops to jump through and as minimal cost as possible. If someone wants to use the luxury of their closed, expensive, familiar tool that is fine too, they can just import it.
2. Eagle KiCad
2. KiCad
However, using ExpressPCB is kind of tempting because their PCB fabrication prices are a bit lower than what DipTrace offers.
2) None - very happy with KiCad
Not for a very long while. I did quite a few boards with it back 'in the day'.
I *think* I've still got a set of install floppies down in the store. Plus my version which removed the parallel port dongle code.
2)No reason to change so Easy-PC
2:Altium CircuitStudio, bought it for $500, been a year not used it yet.
If you can export your designs from Altium in a format that other tools can make use of, open or closed, especially KiCad then all is good.
Wow, that is going back. It's quite possible those floppies were for some original PC version of CADSTAR. Are they 5¼-inch?
Early CADSTAR was written in PL/M 86. It was amazing how we got so much code into machines with only 640K RAM. Making heavy use of overlays and the like. We could also drive some pretty huge monitors for the day.
When I left Racal they were just starting a rewrite of CADSTAR in C/C++ for the Mac, which I guess ended up on Windows.
I'd be really interested in a copy of your dedongled floppies, for the historical record, you understand.
Couldn't resist this pie chart form, looks a little like a circuit board pad or via.
In theory, maybe.
However, there is no direct path for Altium Schematics to KiCad.
KiCad can load PCAD-PCB Accel ascii files, and that works ok on the PCB side, but that's only part of the problem...
There may be a some-caveats two-hop path, via Eagle (eg this post), but I've not seen anyone prove that yet.
KiCad has been improving the Eagle import, and that seems a good way to start.
They can be 'quite good', but drill down into things like net class and design rules, blocks and polylines and you find caveats.
Sometimes, differing CAD packages simply do not have equivalent data base structures, so some mapping/guesses are used.
You do not surprise me.
Back in the day, working on CADSTAR as I mentioned above, one of my last tasks there was to write an importer/exporter to/from PADS PCB. That was a pig of a job. I can only imagine things have more complex since then.
And that did not include the schematics...
Yes, exporter as well. The idea was to be able to show off how brilliant CADSTAR PCB with it's cunning autoplace/autoroute tools, was to PADS users.
The idea was also to create such exporters/importers for a bunch of other PCB packages. I'm pretty sure that never happened.
PCB layout is an art, and a good layout is more than just functional: it's a thing of beauty.
-Phil