PCB Software Suggestions
PCB Software Suggestions
(OP)
For a few years now, I have been using PCAD 2001 to develop my PCBs. Until recently, this tool, which is limited to 6 layers and 400 components, has been sufficient for my needs. The problem is that the boards that I have been desiging have been steadilly increasing in their complexity and the one am currently designing exceeds the component limit. The board that I am working on is an IO board with a fairly large number of inputs and outputs and a wide variety of functionaility which drives up the component usage very quickly and this board exceeds the capabilities of my present tool.
I am looking for suggestions for a PCB development (software) package and I wanted to ask what "y'all" are using to develop your PCBs with these days? I am intereted in a commercial package that can reliably handle relatively complex boards for production purposes rather than a free or demo 'web based' program geared towards hobbyists and small quantity prototyping.
I am looking for suggestions for a PCB development (software) package and I wanted to ask what "y'all" are using to develop your PCBs with these days? I am intereted in a commercial package that can reliably handle relatively complex boards for production purposes rather than a free or demo 'web based' program geared towards hobbyists and small quantity prototyping.





RE: PCB Software Suggestions
If you havent't seen the prices of such packages you're in for a surprise. They deliver more, and they cost more. A lot more.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
http://www.cadstarworld.com/
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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
I recall once before hearing that a lot of people use, and seem to like, Protel but I am having trouble finding it. Is Protel even available anymore or did it get assimilated by Altium?
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
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RE: PCB Software Suggestions
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
I suppose you should check out Accel. I do a lot of work for Applied Materials and a few years back they standardized on Accel. Their "research showed it to be the best", whatever the hell that means.
Course maybe it's been gobbled up by now by Altium too. Or is the same.
I have used Eagle which seemed pretty good. Seemed like a lot of function for the dollars and wasn't some giant money grubbing EDA house. I think you can try it out for free, see what you think before jumping in.
http://www.cadsoft.de/
http://www.cadsoft.de/Tour/tour00.htm
Ah yes macgyvers2000, fun with LEDs. Looks pretty cool.
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Also used Vutrax, which is very competent, but if I don't use it for a while I have to do the tutorials all over again...
Used Orcad for schematic capture for years, but never used the pcb layout.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Ah cripes I'm too late!
http://www.swallowtech.com/
Life storey...
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Recently I've used PADS and Altium/Protel. I see them as roughly equivalent in capability. PADS originated at the high-end workstation CAD market and has migrated down to the level of PCs over the years. Protel originated on PCs and has worked it's way up to the high end feature market over the years.
Protel Trivia questions; anyone know how "Tasmania" fits into the picture? Remember bus-slot key cards?, or just how "Tango" was related and what happened to them?
I know if you do a monster search using Altium (Protel) and PADS, you will find that more employers are looking for PADS experience.
Despite this, I perfer Protel just for the reason I've used it far longer and am more efficient with it. I am not a PC designer by skill, just an engineer who has to do a lot of his own PC board design. Since I do a lot of Analog and RF, or have a lot of placement constraints, I never use autorouters.
I once worked at a company where I was developing a lot of complex boards. These were contracted outside to a outfit that dedicated PCB designers who used Mentor. They would pass back completed designs in just a few days! But such tools are not for the engineer who has to do everything himself.
As for Altium/Protel - To misquote Shakespear: A rose by any other name is still a rose cuz each new bud still has bugs.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
I've noticed that some of the firms I've worked for have used Orcad for schematic capture and PADS for pcb layout.
No idea why, but that's the way it's been.
Quite like CadStar, which is just as well since I use it frequently.
Once I'd figured out how to get the little hole in the middle of the pad (by changing the pad definition from "circle" to "apperture"), it all went well.
Never done any SM stuff with it though. The available technology for producing the pcb (i.e. me, laser printer, uv box and etch tank) tend to argue against fine pitch devices and narrow tracks, though I am getting better slowly.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
lolo
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
I shall need to find someone to take them away... safely and legally.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
The big drawback of the OrCAD/PADS combo is that you can't perform on-the-fly pin and gate swaps. When the board gets into high-density, this swapping ability allows you to optimize the routing without going back and forth between layout and capture.
How nicely do the other low-cost packages perform on this aspect?
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
OrCAD's layout tool is now Allegro. Allegro is a very nice tool if you use it everyday, but I've found it has a steep learning curve every time I move away from it for a while (and that happens a lot). Allegro only works in action-object mode, not object-action, so moving to it from other layout packages is tedious.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
It was decided to upgrade the PCAD to the latest edition as this is the same tool we have been using and also appeares to be the most cost effective solution. However, upon hearing about this, the CAD manager at another one of our companies called me this morning to strongly encourage me to NOT buy the PCAD. Instead he recommends Cadence.
The first of the two reasons he gave me for this suggestion were that he feels PCAD currently has a very small percentage of the market and combined with the fact that there has been little (visible) development in their tools he questions whether it will remain available. The second reason is that his experience has shown that once you have climbed the learning curve with Cadence, PCB development will talk almost half as long.
The other thing I wanted to mention about this issue, is that on the Suggestion of Altium, I downloaded the PCAD2004 30 day trial. Obtaining the download has proven to be an extreme excersize in frustration. First, the FPT system they contract through would not recognize the user name and password they gave me. I tried again the next day and changed a checkbox on the login screen that I had no idea what it was for an it appeared to work. At this point I was able to download the 900+MB program. Lastly, upon trying to unzip the program, I discovered that I needed a password. After two phone calls and a couple of emails with Altium, I was told the password which consists of 30 characters of nonsense numbers and letters.
It is very obvious that the company is paranoid about protecting their licensing and puts a tremendous amount of effort in to THEIR security. If they would only spend 1/8th of that effort on the tools, they would have one hell of a program.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Designer 6 has a lot of features but like most Altium/Protel releases there are bugs and migrating from say 98 or 99SE can be frustrating to say the least. In fact using Altium/Protel can be very "character building"!
regards
Pete
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
I don't have warm-fuzzies about PCAD sticking around either; when I told the Altium salesperson I was interested in PCAD he strongly, strongly pushed me toward Altium (funny though, the price was the same...).
Altium has excellent tech support for PCAD. I'm assuming it is just as good for Altium Designer...
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Back then we had rules like, save every 5 mintues to a different filename, so when the program locks and corrupts the database, you can step back 5 mintues and recover. Now PADs autosaves a backup file to a different filename every 5 minutes. Talk about progress...
PADs got swallowed by Mentor Graphics, which already had Viewlogic and ViewDraw. I had used those on the Sun platform through Xwindows. Eventually the old Viewlogic was obsoleted and the PADs codebase took it's place, from what I was told.
Bottom line is PADs is a mature product, and although it got a rough start, it is probably the best all around product, especially when using the schematic and PCB packages together. Holy dual monitors batman!
I would recommend staying away from Eagle, even considering the $0 price. With most packages there is a ASCII import/export, or someway to convert designs to other CAD systems, but with Eagle it is a dead end. Right now I have an Eagle design that I had contracted out, and now wish to maintain it in PADs. This board will be completely re-layed out to go from Rev B to Rev C. Oh well.
I'm down a couple revs on PADs, and have been looking into current software. I've been poking for current prices for PADs, but buying CAD software is worse than buying a used car. Anyone know what the real price for powerlogic and powerpcb are?
-Bill
CE Designer Forum
www.cedesigner.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Ah man that is a choice observation!!! HAHAHAHAHA
I am sorry to hear that about Eagle. <sniff
The couple times I used it I was pleasantly surprised by it. I use a custom layout package a colleague created. It is extremely powerful running on top of AutoCad but of course I have now built up hundreds of schematics and thousands of parts built just the way I like them and so anything else means another long slog through the valleyofdarkness.
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
It is still far from given, so this why I was hoping a comment from someone who might have been using it. Is it bugged? Are the bugs worked out by any support team? Are they at least documented?
I'd die for these automatic differential routing features, but my death is not worth the price of these recent design suites so I stick to my outdated versions until my value goes up.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
I got a price of $4K for PADs 2006 with schematic, PCB, and 2 layer autorouter. From another source I got a price of $3.5K for the same thing. I am still looking for another datapoint to find out if they can be unbundled, and if the prices are padded (no pun intended).
-Bill
CE Designer Forum
www.cedesigner.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
About $4500 for a dongle for PowerLogic and another dongle for PowerPCB so one user can be working on a schematic and another working on a layout at the same time. About $1200 for the PowerLogic dongle and $3300 for the PowerPCB dongle.
About $5300 to get the two license on your network. About $1500 for PowerLogic and $3800 for PowerPCB.
OrCAD runs $8000 for the base package.
Altium Designer is $10000. Same price for PCAD from Altium. That might be negotiable; the initial quote is about $2000 higher than we paid about four years ago with another company...
That's the basic packages; the options add up fast to push you to the $10K mark. Add digital simulation on the high end (Hyperlynx) and you can be talking over $30K for full PADS system.
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
-Bill
CE Designer Forum
www.cedesigner.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Ideally, I'd like something EPD could distribute as well, so we can get some direct advantage, as well as feedback.
I don't want to bother approaching one of the big ones (PADS, PCAD, etc.) since they'd just swallow us up (that and the fact that they probably wouldn't be interested).
Anybody got any ideas or recommendations?
Dan Judd
danjudd@epdcorp.com
RE: PCB Software Suggestions
Here is the 'dry' site. There are many other sites that are more lucid and where you can download the demo system.
http://www.intellicad.org/default-net6.asp
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com