Re: Low cost PCB layout software

From: Richard (rh86_at_azglobal.com)
Date: 12/27/03 

Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 12:22:23 -0700

Ralph Malph wrote:
> The Eagle software from CadSoft seemed like it had
> the most promise, but I tried to download the older
> version 4.09 as someone recommended and could not
> get either release to install.

Ralph,

Eagle really is a good package. It'd be worth working through your
install errors, if you've got the patience.

Cadsoft hosts newsgroups for product support, and I've been pleased with
the user community as well. Before I bought, I scoured both to look for
the chronic complaints and found there were no serious issues, and a lot
of compliments - a nice side-effect of an open support forum. Here are
their English newsgroups:
news://news.cadsoft.de/eagle.userchat.eng
news://news.cadsoft.de/eagle.support.eng

If you're like me, you'll dislike Eagle's mouse UI, but once you learn
the keyboard syntax things go much faster (it also has some potent
scripting capabilities). It does take a little training; the UI is not
intuitive to newcomers. There's a tutorial you can download from
Cadsoft's site - I highly recommend it.

The demo version is full-featured, but limited to ~4x6" board and 2
layers. (The board, traces, and PTH can exceed this dimention, but not
component pads/holes.) The demo sadly does not include the PDF manual,
which makes eval quite a bit harder.

And as someone else commented - when it comes to libraries, "Trust but
verify" against datasheets. I've been very pleased with the extensive
Eagle library, though I have found a few errors (like pad spacing on an
SMT package). The good thing is... it's fairly easy to publish the
corrections to the user community.