PCB Design Tools handy link page

[tubeswell]

Found this today as I was desperately seeking a handy freeware layout drawing program for my ole mac.

Thought it might come in handy to anyone like me who is sick enough to want to design their own layouts. :-)

http://www.olimex.com/pcb/dtools.html

[tedmich]

Thanks TW!


I have grown to love DIPTrace for my PC, it even has an autorouter and tube templates!

[Don Moose]

A vote for KiCAD here - been using it for nearly 2 years now, but not for tube stuff.
FREE and a reasonable learning curve (at least for me).

[defaced]

Thanks for the links. I have quickly out grown Eagle's free board size and have looked at a couple other options, but didn't know there were this many out there.

Don, with KiCAD what did you find the best way to learn it was? I've gone through the tutorial and am still fundamentally lost on how to fully use it.

[Don Moose]

I realize my recommendation may be a little unfair - I've been using ECAD packages of various sorts since about '86, so learning a new one is a set of "OK, so how do I"

- make a new schematic symbol -
- make a new footprint -
- associate a symbol with a footprint -
- etc

For me, these things were reasonably straightforward by poking around and using the on line help.

I don't use the KiCAD front end - you may prefer it, but I find the project setup/mgmt not worth the hassle. I make a new directory for each version of each project. If it's a revision of an older project, I copy the files and rename with the new version number, then open the .sch file with EESCHEMA, launching PCBNEW with the button in EESCHEMA - makes switching back and forth much easier.

Hint - NAME your shcematic file something other than noname.sch using Save As.

--- gotta get back to this reply this evening ---

[kldguitar]

we commonly use protel software to design the schematic and PCB layout
it is good software.