[time-nuts] Schematic capture, anyone?

[shalimr9 at gmail.com]

Rick,

Thanks for the comments on Eagle.

I have been frustrated trying to learn Eagle for a small urgent project recently. I ended up using ExpressPCB and the attendant schematic capture.
While it uses proprietary file format and is therefore locked to one vendor, it was surprisingly easy to use.
I created a schematic and a double sided RF PWB in a couple of weeks with minimum reference to the documentation. That was my first PWB design.

I intend to learn Eagle for future projects though, as I need the capability to generate Gerbers at least.

I tried KiCAD but I found it unfriendly and I do not like the way the schematic symbols look (I like my resistors wiggly, not rectangular, call me old fashioned...)

If someone only needs a simple schematic capture tool, ExpressSCH from ExpressPCB is hard to beat. You can easily edit or create new symbols and the printouts look good and professional.

Didier KO4BB

Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless thingy while I do other things...

-----Original Message-----
From: "Rick Karlquist" <richard at karlquist.com>
Sender: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:21:39 
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement<time-nuts at febo.com>
Reply-To: richard at karlquist.com,
	Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
	<time-nuts at febo.com>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Schematic capture, anyone?

Jim Hickstein wrote:
> What do people use these days for schematic capture (and just possibly PCB
>
> worse, I prefer ANSI logic symbology over shovels-and-spades (or, really,
> over
> plain rectangles where you're expected to know what the part number
> means).
>

I'll add another vote for Eagle.  It is a German program written in
Unix, and ported to Windows.  Therefore, you select the action
first then click on the object of the action.  It takes some getting
used to.  There has been a pattern of PC layout companies getting
cobbled up leaving you with an orphan program, or an upgrade
to some very expensive program.  Orcad and Protel go gobbled up.
Eagle did too, but by a distributor, Newark.  They just came out
with a new improved version.  You can finally draw arbitrary SMT
footprints.  I think that was the major limitation of the old
version.  You can of course draw your own symbols any way you like.
I have been using Eagle for 5 years now and never looked back.
One other drawback of Eagle is that it is difficult to move a design
between computers, and there are issues with the way preferences
are stored.  If you use a part from a library in a design, you are
forever locked into that library.   Many other CAD systems have these
issues.  Mentor used to be terrible about having absolute path names, etc.

Rick N6RK


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