Anybody using Cadsoft Eagle?

[bob p]

I've been playing around with CadSoft's Eagle program for drawing schematics and creating PCB for a solid state project. Now I'm starting to think about using it to design my own PCB for tube applications.

edit: FYI there are libraries available for the common tube types at the cadsoft site.

[Gregg]

I would strongly advise anyone to stay away from that piece of s**t software but since you're in it already it's already too late.

[bob p]

How about recommending something better?

[Dave H]

I use Orcad for work projects. At home I've used TinyCad and FreePCB. They worked out fine. I could set them to operate in nearly the same way as Orcad i.e. to produce Gerber, NC drill files and automatically generated spreadsheet BOMs. The only significant difference for me is they are £2000 cheaper.

[MarkusBass]

I curious what you guys don't like about Eagle. I use the Freeware version and as for now I only found 2 minor bugs. The most important limitation of the software is the size of the board. For large boards you have to pay a lot. And I'm afraid that with the Freware version you won't be able to design PC boards for tube amps (because usually they are big). The big advantage of Eagle are very good libraries.
As a competitor you may try KiCAD. It's free, has no limits on the board size but it has also not the best libraries (sometimes there are mistakes like nor correctly connected pins). But it's free and if you create your own libraries, you'll be in much better position than with Eagle Freeware. I also looked at OrCAD Lite version but it has so many limitations (like maximum 75 nets) that it does not compare to Eagle Freeware. And the price of the full version is so high than it is not available for use by hobbyists.
I would use Ealge for small boards (preamps, power supplies) and KiCAD for larger boards. Unless, you guys tell me how you get OrCAD cheap. Also the big advantage of Eagle is that it is simple and you can learn it in 2-3 days. I don't know how quickly you can learn OrCAD.

Mark

[raiken]

I own/use OrCad/Cadence, but if I didn't, I'd take a hard look at these guys:

DipTrace - Schematic and PCB Design Software

[nickb]

How about recommending something better?

KiCad is a bit quirky but very capable, has 3D modelling and an interface to a free auto-router. Free and no limits.

[Gaz]

Just use Eagle. It has a learning curve, but it's not bad. Diptrace is quicker to learn, but there's very little support for it. You like perusing forums for quick and smart answers to all your little questions? Me too, and that's why I use Eagle.

[bob p]

Looks like we can cross one of our MIA members off of the missing list.

I have started using Eagle 7.6.0 Light on Linux. My experience has been OK I guess, but the bugs are killing me.

I drew one PSU board for a SS amp project last week, everything worked fine.

Last night I drew up an AB763 preamp/PI schematic and board. With the free version of Eagle it's was quite a challenge to fit a one channel AB763 circuit with noval tubes onto the small board size that is supported. For tube work, you pretty much have to leave the tubes off of the board or go with micro-sized box caps.

I have had serious reliability problems. Eagle crashed on me on 6 different occasions in one session last night, causing me to lose my work repeatedly. In each case I was running the router. After it completed successfully I wanted to make some revisions, so I clicked on the buttons to do a "rip up" of the entire board, clearing the traces and going back to air wires so that I could reposition some components. Instead of taking me back to air wires, several times the act of clicking the "ripup group" function caused all program windows to vanish all my work went with it.

I had used OrCad back in my Windows days.

[MarkusBass]

I'm afraid that the crashes are related to Linux. I worked on Windows 7 previously and now on Windows 10 and never had a single crash, or lost my work. One of the minor bugs I know is related to "rip up" command - when the board is double-sided and a track has a via, the command does not behave correctly. But I have a workaround for this problem so this is not a real problem.
Regarding boards for tube circuits the limitations of the Freeware version do not allow for such a boards. In my opinion the tubes shouldn't be on the board but anyway the board should be 16 cm or even more long. This is a task for some other software. I personally would design such boards in KiCAD.

Mark

[bob p]

It would appear that the linux version of Eagle is not being maintained. the installation scripts looks for libraries that are so old that no major linux distribution has used them for years. They offer no support for linux installs, so you have to hunt the linux forums for installation help. The Fedora people who use Eagle have had to create symlinks so that when Eagle calls the outdated libraries it uses the current libraries instead.

To keep things in perspective -- I am not exacerbating the problem by using a bleeding edge linux distribution. I've even tried running Eagle on a Fedora box that hasn't been updated in 3 years and its' libraries are too new for Eagle to complete the install. Those obsolete libraries went away so many years ago that it's evident that nobody at Eagle is even trying to offer linux support.

That, along with the small board size, is making Eagle look pretty weak. I'm thinking that the open source offering from Cern is probably going to be more reliable -- they build it on Scientific Linux, which is basically their own spin on Red Hat, which means that the guys who do the development actually use it in the environment that they build it for, instead of just giving a half-baked nod to linux users.

[MarkusBass]

Yes, it looks like the crashes are Linux related. When I started learning KiCAD I was also able to make the program crash but this was due to completely incorrect steps I wanted to perform . Now, I have no problem with it. The only minor problem that I have now is that with every new component (not used previously) you need to verify whether the library is correct. But this shouldn't be a problem if you design boards for tube amps and you use 2 or 3 different types of tubes. You verify the library only once.

Mark

[Zozobra]

I know quite a few of the pedal/fx orientated sites have a thing for diptrace and some folks have made some useful libraries for it.

[GainFreak]

Sprint Layout. It's not free but is worth every single cent. Simple, very intuitive (under one hour) and capable of exporting all kinds of production files. Up to 4 layers, working space 500x500m, easy creation of library elements. One interesting feature is you can import in the working field a PCB picture, resize it appropriately and draw "on top" of it.

[bob p]

It looks like Diptrace is Win/Mac, and Sprint Layout is Win only.