Ivex vs. Eagle
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I've heard so much about the Eagle design package, that I'm interested in
giving it a try. I've been using Ivex WinDraft & WinBoard for a couple of
years now, and there are a few things that bug me about it. I run these on a
dual PIII NT4 workstation with gobs of RDRAM, and it still crashes at
times - I believe because it they are 16-bit programs.
Does anyone have experience with both Ivex & Eagle that they might wish to
share?
Appreciation in advance,
Chris
giving it a try. I've been using Ivex WinDraft & WinBoard for a couple of
years now, and there are a few things that bug me about it. I run these on a
dual PIII NT4 workstation with gobs of RDRAM, and it still crashes at
times - I believe because it they are 16-bit programs.
Does anyone have experience with both Ivex & Eagle that they might wish to
share?
Appreciation in advance,
Chris
Comments
> share?
Not with Eagle (yet .. will learn when the summer rush slows back down).
Personally I find Ivex backwards, but can do most of what I want ... it
doesn't make a lick of sense and it annoys me that the same keyboard
shortcuts I use in schematics don't work in layout .... but I digress.
I wanted to comment on the crashing ... I don't think it's your machine or
how much RAM, etc. It's just a buggy damn program that crashes all the time.
I am now in the habit of keystroking the "save" command after everything I
do because it crashes all the durn time.... I even upgraded to Win2K to get
away from crashing the operating system (protected mode memory won't corrupt
the main OS when it dies) ... waaaaaaaayyyyyy too many times waiting for
Win98 to shutdown when Ivex crashed the system.
Eagle looks nice ... but I didn't get much time to play with it yet ...
FWIW,
John
I used to work with Orcad for the schematic capture, and Protel for the
print design (manualy...).
I discovered Eagle, and I like it. There is a bunch of libraries, there is
nearly no need to create components. If you need a library with the Stamp, I
made one which is on the Stamp FAQ
(http://www.al-williams.com/wd5gnr/stampfaq.htm).
I think it's realy a user-friendly interface. I don't have a manual, and
after only a few hours, I'm able to create a new design without any problem.
There is an autorouter which can help a lot, even for single-sided boards.
I don't know about Ivex, but Eagle is a complete design program, and it's on
the Internet (http://www.cadsoft.de/download.htm).
Best regards,
Phil.
Original Message
From: "Chris Loiacono (E-mail)" <chris01@t...>
> Does anyone have experience with both Ivex & Eagle that they might wish to
> share?
> I think it's realy a user-friendly interface. I don't have a manual, and
> after only a few hours, I'm able to create a new design without any problem.
> There is an autorouter which can help a lot, even for single-sided boards.
> I don't know about Ivex, but Eagle is a complete design program, and it's on
> the Internet (http://www.cadsoft.de/download.htm).
Aside from it having a relatively user-friendly interface, it also is at
its core command-line based, which means you can enter pretty complex
CLI instructions into the window, and in fact build complex scripts based
on these instructions, so it's fairly flexible on the back end as well.
I've used it for about a year and a half and built a couple of boards with
it. I quite like it. The autorouter works, but needs a little bit more
flexibility. My only major problem is that if you want the full version
it's pretty costly. As a hobbyist who occasionally wants to build 3x4
boards, I'd be willing to pay $200 or so for a decent piece of layout
software, but not the cost they wanted. I think it was like $1299 or so.
Sean T. Lamont, CTO / Chief NetNerd, Abstract Software, Inc. (ServNet)
Seattle - Bellingham - Vancouver - Portland - Everett - Tacoma - Bremerton
email: lamont@a... WWW: http://www.serv.net
"...There's no moral, it's just a lot of stuff that happens". - H. Simpson
>I've heard so much about the Eagle design package, that I'm interested in
>giving it a try. I've been using Ivex WinDraft & WinBoard for a couple of
>years now, and there are a few things that bug me about it. I run these on a
>dual PIII NT4 workstation with gobs of RDRAM, and it still crashes at
>times - I believe because it they are 16-bit programs.
>
>Does anyone have experience with both Ivex & Eagle that they might wish to
>share?
While I can't comment about either of the above packages, I highly
recommend that you take a look at Cadint. You can download the free
version from either www.cadint.com or www.cadint.se . The paid-for
versions can be reasonably pricey but the free version does 250 pins. Do
take the time to do the tutorial exercises - it helps you understand their
way of doing things.
I've been using Cadint's predecessor (EE Designer) since the mid 80's and
find that even that old package does most things faster, easier, and better
than many of the so-called modern packages. And the damm thing is STABLE -
it doesn't cause a crash - ever. I will often have 5 or 6 different
instances running at the same time (in DOS boxes) and have used it under
DOS, Win 3.11, Win 95, Win 98. I haven't tried it under NT or 2000.
I have Cadint but use it sparingly because it is so much easier to do
things in the package I've been using all these years. But, it too is
stable, doesn't crash, and does exactly what it is supposed to do. And I
just can't ask for more than that.
dwayne
Dwayne Reid <dwayner@p...>
Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA
(780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax
Celebrating 17 years of Engineering Innovation (1984 - 2001)
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>>share?
I used IVEX WinBoard briefly, and it seemed a bit obtuse to me. I use
Protel now. YMMV.
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