alternatives to EAGLE cad?

[[email protected]]

Lately I've been annoyed and frustrated with EAGLE. No big problems,
just lots of seemingly minor things - like lots of paper cuts. I
download Pulsonix's demo many months ago and was impressed that it
imported one of my EAGLE projects without too much input from me. And
it's auto router blew me away. Although I did had a hard time
figuring out how to manual route in Pulsonix. After using EAGLE's
"backwards" interface all these years, I guess a 'normal' interface is
difficult for me to use

I don't have a clue how much Pulsonix is, but I suspect it's more than
the full version of EAGLE ($1,500). Pulsonix: "Contact sales" is a
clue. I have used EAGLE to design some boards for other people. But
using EAGLE is time consuming, and thus I'm hoping to find a more time
efficient PCB cad system. Any suggestions? And if I could get enough
clients to pay for a PCB cad system that would be great, too

-Dave Pollum

 

[Leon]

Lately I've been annoyed and frustrated with EAGLE.  No big problems,
just lots of seemingly minor things - like lots of paper cuts.  I
download Pulsonix's demo many months ago and was impressed that it
imported one of my EAGLE projects without too much input from me.  And
it's auto router blew me away.  Although I did had a hard time
figuring out how to manual route in Pulsonix.  After using EAGLE's
"backwards" interface all these years, I guess a 'normal' interface is
difficult for me to use

I don't have a clue how much Pulsonix is, but I suspect it's more than
the full version of EAGLE ($1,500).  Pulsonix: "Contact sales" is a
clue.  I have used EAGLE to design some boards for other people.  But
using EAGLE is time consuming, and thus I'm hoping to find a more time
efficient PCB cad system.  Any suggestions?  And if I could get enough
clients to pay for a PCB cad system that would be great, too

-Dave Pollum

They don't put them on their web site because of currency
fluctuations. The US distributor, Advanced Circuits, used to have
prices in $, but they seem to have disappeared. It starts at about
$2,000, IIRC.

I use Pulsonix, and formed this support group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PulsonixUG/

Have a look at Easy-PC:

http://www.numberone.com

It's from the same parent company as Pulsonix, and shares many of the
same features. It's aimed more at the hobbyist and educational market.

Leon

 

[Leon]

They don't put them on their web site because of currency
fluctuations. The US distributor, Advanced Circuits, used to have
prices in $, but they seem to have disappeared. It starts at about
$2,000, IIRC.

I use Pulsonix, and formed this support group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PulsonixUG/

Have a look at Easy-PC:

http://www.numberone.com

It's from the same parent company as Pulsonix, and shares many of the
same features. It's aimed more at the hobbyist and educational market.

Leon

I just spoke to Pulsonix. It actually starts at £1750 GBP, which is
more like $3,000.

Leon

 

[[email protected]]

I just spoke to Pulsonix. It actually starts at £1750 GBP, which is
more like $3,000.

Leon

So Leon, what do I get for that price?
-Dave Pollum

 

[Leon]

So Leon, what do I get for that price?
-Dave Pollum

Have a look at the web site:

http://www.pulsonix.com

It competes with products like PADS and Altium that cost twice as
much, has much better support and is much easier to use. It even has
some features that I don't think they have, like RF track mitres for
microwave design and track following. It also imports designs and
libraries from all the other major packages.

Leon

 

[JeffM]

Lately I've been annoyed and frustrated with EAGLE.

Heh. Doesn't even sound like you've encoutered
their lock-you-out-of-your-own-work-product DRM yet.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...less+*-*-*-projects-could-no-longer-be-opened

(I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted
with closed-source software of all stripes
--well, mostly the antics of the corporations.)

After using EAGLE's "backwards" interface all these years,
I guess a 'normal' interface is difficult for me to use

There's that too--though it's usually not a huge deal.

[...]I'm hoping to find a more time efficient PCB cad system.
-Dave Pollum

If you use Cadsoft's scripting capability,
I don't think you will find a package much more time-efficient.

With all the acquisition / knife-the-baby activity in the ECAD
industry,
I'm not confident that ANY current payware offering
will still be available/supported 2 years from now.

Depending on your needs, there are several GPL'd offerings:
http://kicad.sourceforge.net
http://geda.seul.org (Often called *Windoze-hostile*
--though there _are_ folks using it under Windoze.)

http://www.freepcb.com (Requires seperate capture app[1])
http://tinycad.sourceforge.net (Requires seperate capture app[1])

Even if there are time-efficiency gains, for several weeks
learning the interface/quirks of a new app will eat those up.
..
..
[1] LTspice produces compatible netlists.

 

[Joerg]

JeffM wrote:

[...]

With all the acquisition / knife-the-baby activity in the ECAD
industry,
I'm not confident that ANY current payware offering
will still be available/supported 2 years from now.

Been there. After the acqusition OrCAD has IMHO never achieved the
robustness of the old SDT version :-(

So I switched to Eagle but my hopes that V5 would finally bring a
hierarchical sheet structure have been dashed. Didn't happen. That is
IMHO a huge shortcoming of this CAD software. So I am looking as well.
Again.

Depending on your needs, there are several GPL'd offerings:
http://kicad.sourceforge.net
http://geda.seul.org (Often called *Windoze-hostile*
--though there _are_ folks using it under Windoze.)

I just installed gEDA inside a Sun VirtualBox engine. Haven't had much
time to kick the tires yet but all the things I did try with gschem made
me like it more and more. Just don't bet on too many corporate users.
Then again that's the case with most CAD systems. The chance for a
consultant like me to encounter a client who uses the same CAD are
pretty slim although it did happen on occasion.

http://www.freepcb.com (Requires seperate capture app[1])
http://tinycad.sourceforge.net (Requires seperate capture app[1])

Even if there are time-efficiency gains, for several weeks
learning the interface/quirks of a new app will eat those up.
.
.
[1] LTspice produces compatible netlists.

LTSpice is one of them best things that could have happened to us since
the invention of sliced bread but the schematic capture part of it is,
ahem, a bit rough. My design last week contains >580 parts. I can't
imagine doing something like that with LTSpice.