Homebrew PCBs

On 13/11/2007, Steve <alienrelics@...> wrote:

> That is an excellent question. I don't think there is one answer to
>  that, however I am also very interested in the answer(s).

For contract work, I use Protel (well, Altium Designer 6), but I also
have older versions of Orcad (came bundled with Specctra) and Pads
(bought for me by a customer for one job).
The combination of AD6 and Specctra makes most things possible, from
titchy single-layer projects to relatively dense open-source stuff
like
http://www.balloonboard.org/ , to high volume commercial stuff in
various technologies.

There's no clear winner out there. PCB shops see a lot of desgn packages.

I occasionally dip into gEDA, but never convince myself (yet) that I
can get a serious project out of the other end without a massive
amount of effort - and, in my experience, effort = errors. Automation
& automated checking (plus effort) delivers working boards. Trustable
libraries matter, too - either my Protel libraries I've built up over
the years, or manufacturer libraried. The probability of error on a
hand-entered 700+-pin BGA, as well as the catastrophic dullness, means
it's a last resort, at best.

For boards that can be home-etched, I dunno. Any non-toy package can
do them trivially. Some of the macros you'd want to improve yield as
far as possible aren't built-in, since they're tactics you wouldn't
want to be using for real.

Steve