Best PCB program under $500?
Jun 21, 2008 at 6:34 AM Post #16 of 26
Interesting. I hadn't heard of Easy-PC before. It's not much more expensive than diptrace, so I'll have to do feature-by feature comparison between those two and Eagle as well.
 
Jun 6, 2011 at 9:03 AM Post #18 of 26
Jun 8, 2011 at 10:34 PM Post #21 of 26
I have over ten years experience with Altium tools. First started using Protel in 1998 or so. Then switched over to Mentor Graphics PADS for a year, then to P-CAD. Used P-CAD for ten or so years and finally don't do major PCB layouts anymore. All I can say is Altium kicks ass.
 
For free stuff, I use FreePCB:
http://www.freepcb.com/
Make sure you upgrade the executable file to version 1.359 and you're in business. It's a little clunky, and takes some time to get used to. It will take in a netlist file from LTSpice IV if you massage it correctly, will export gerber files, and has a really high size limitation. I had my computer give up before the software did once.
 
Jun 9, 2011 at 11:30 AM Post #23 of 26
I've used gEDA at work for quite some time and I very much hate it. I find that it's very sluggish in it's operation, but the company likes it's price, so I have to stick with it.
 
 
 
Jun 9, 2011 at 12:29 PM Post #24 of 26
ExpressPCB is super fast and easy to use for anyone and is a good stepping stone to learn PCB software. It is one of those programs that once you "get it" on how things work, you can create and lay boards out amazingly fast. However it does not produce gerber files. Once you order boards however and verify they are what you want, you can order a full set of gerber files normally for $60.If you want to make a change to your board later on, you have to order boards through them again / pay again for gerber files. If they ever made a program for the masses you could buy, it would go over like wildfire as it is the easiest to use program IMO on the market especially when working mainly basic designs. Also if they offered more things such as different color solder masks or plating options, I would keep all of my business through them as their prices are actually pretty good for a US based company and their shipping is lightning fast!
 
Eagle is decent but for the free program, they lock you into very tiny pcb's. And for $250 they still keep you locked at a small PCB size which is annoying. It works just fine as a program, no real complaints.
 
Diptrace is a program I really wanted to like as it was priced decent. But I found overall simple tasks were very annoying to do. I could layout a component in expresspcb 5x faster it seemed and with less annoyance.
 
Still searching for that magic program that lets me work with decent board sizes, and is fast / easy to make boards with and produces the proper files.
 
Jun 10, 2011 at 6:43 PM Post #25 of 26
Design Spark didn't strike me as too terrible. Free and no size limitations.  I ran into problems when I was putting down switches and it kept trying to route pins that I didn't want it to touch.  Might have just been how I was using it though.
 
Jun 13, 2011 at 12:22 PM Post #26 of 26


Quote:
tangent said:
 
Umm....there's been 10x inflation over the past 3 years, so we can start talking about $5K packages now?
Click to expand...



The prices of CAD software are amazingly high. I think the software vendors are realizing this. In the last year or so, Altium has been allowing people to obtain the software without dishing out thousands of dollars in one transaction. Hopefully the huge influx of free PCB software tools will force prices down even further.
 
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