Board Layout Tool

[BeeJ]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or
some other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

 

[Chieftain of the Carpet Crawlers]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or
some other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

There are Ubuntu and other Linux distro Live CD and DVDs which are EDA
oriented.

On Ubuntu's site and elsewhere. easy to find.

 

[Rich Webb]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or
some other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

http://kicad-pcb.org

Packages available for Windows & Linux. Includes schematic capture and
board layout. I get the boards done at Sunstone, no problems. A Gerber
viewer is included but I also do a preview of the Gerbers with ViewMate
<http://www.pentalogix.com/viewmate.php> just for the warm'n'fuzzy of
having a third party app look it over.

 

[Jamie]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or some
other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

SunStone PCB people have their own program you can use..
http://www.sunstone.com/PCB123.aspx

ExpressPCB and ExpressSCM is another..

Jamie

 

[Jamie]

http://kicad-pcb.org

Packages available for Windows & Linux. Includes schematic capture and
board layout. I get the boards done at Sunstone, no problems. A Gerber
viewer is included but I also do a preview of the Gerbers with ViewMate
<http://www.pentalogix.com/viewmate.php> just for the warm'n'fuzzy of
having a third party app look it over.

looks like they have a newer version than what I have in this machine..

Maybe I'll do the updates..

Jamie

 

[rickman]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or some
other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

I highly recommend FreePCB for layout in Windows. It will import a
netlist from any schematic programs that outputs in PADS format.

Many people who use FreePCB also use TinyCAD. I haven't tried it yet as
I am still using an old version of OrCad.

Both programs have very helpful support forums. FreePCB is on the web
site at freepcb.com and TinyCAD is a yahoo group.

I have used FreePCB commercially to produce designs for Fortune 1000
companies.

Rick

 

[Bill Sloman]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files.  Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or
some other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/ECADList.html

If you've got a Linux distribution running on any of your computers,
take a close look at the gEDA project . It's been around for more than
ten years now, and it's certainly easy to install under SuSE.

 

[Christopher Head]

KiCad does the job for me and is available for both Windows and Linux.
Schematic capture plus PCB layout, uses standard format netlist files
so presumably can import from other schematic capture tools, BOM
generation, Gerber and Excellon output.

Chris

 

[Nico Coesel]

Bill Sloman wrote:


I looked at it about a year ago. The schematic entry part looked
(barely) functional. The PCB layout looked woefully low on
capability to edit the board, and the coverage of the layout-vs-schematic
seemed to be poor, too. Has there been a lot of work on this since
then?

I guess not. A customer of mine is using gEDA and PCB exclusively
though. Also for multilayer boards with large BGA packages. I guess it
is a package with a steep learning curve. I have used gEDA and PCB
once and decided to shell out a couple of grand on a real EDA package.

 

[Chris]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or some
other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

If you don't mind the (free) registration to activate and the commercial
affiliation...

http://www.designspark.com/pcb

Latest version integrates LTSpice (which has to be separately installed)
via custom libraries.

The included library set is reasonably comprehensive (esp for hobby
work) and the lib editor is also quite slick for a low-end product.

HTH Chris.

 

[Rene]

Looking for a freebie Board Layout Tool that produces a drawing and
Gerber files. Need up to four layers and up to 100 components.
Anything out there?

How about one that produces a layout from a LT schematic capture or some
other schematic capture app?

Just a hobbyist.
Long time ago I did dot and tape ups but getting too old for that.

Just another hobbyist just giving another vote for KiCad.

Have fun with your hobby!

Sincerely,
Rene

 

[Bill Sloman]

I guess not. A customer of mine is using gEDA and PCB exclusively
though. Also for multilayer boards with large BGA packages. I guess it
is a package with a steep learning curve. I have used gEDA and PCB
once and decided to shell out a couple of grand on a real EDA package.

The gEDA package does have a steep learning curve, and I've not yet
had the motivation to get very far up it - it seemed to be mostly used
by people who were happy to re-write the bits they didn't like. The
impression that I've got is that it can do anything you need but you
may have to dig around a bit to find out how to do more complicated
stuff.

Commercial packages aren't immune from this kind of problem. I used
Orcad 4 happily for schematic capture for a couple of years, but the
up-grade after that was horrible, and the first version of the up-
graded printed-circuit layout package that came with it was a total
disaster - you couldn't do manual layouts (though you could edit the
results of the machine-generated layout) and you had to add a huge
pile of information to every component on the schematic before the
system would condescend to start generating a layout for you.

 

[rickman]

The gEDA package does have a steep learning curve, and I've not yet
had the motivation to get very far up it - it seemed to be mostly used
by people who were happy to re-write the bits they didn't like. The
impression that I've got is that it can do anything you need but you
may have to dig around a bit to find out how to do more complicated
stuff.

Commercial packages aren't immune from this kind of problem. I used
Orcad 4 happily for schematic capture for a couple of years, but the
up-grade after that was horrible, and the first version of the up-
graded printed-circuit layout package that came with it was a total
disaster - you couldn't do manual layouts (though you could edit the
results of the machine-generated layout) and you had to add a huge
pile of information to every component on the schematic before the
system would condescend to start generating a layout for you.

That is one of the advantages of the FreePCB package if you are using
Windows. It is easy to learn. It has just one stumbling block about
how to route traces. You have to have a rat line on the layout first.
People expect the tool to follow their arbitrary routing and it can't do
that. But if you start by routing points connected by a rat line it
works great. Not hard to learn, but not obvious if you don't know.

Rick