Homebrew PCBs

Such as just about any other package. At home i use Target 3001 and
that gets the job done more comfortable, quicker, and cheaper, than
eagle. It'll also run the odd simulation and front panel drawing. The
english language translation used to be bad though. And i actually do
not consider Target a professional package like Protel and Orcad, but
it is more than enough for most things. If you want to design PC
motherboards it might not be suitable;-)

Back when i selected my PCB software i tried a handful of packages,
quite a few were acceptable, some weren't. The free ones all lacked
features (coming from orcad i was not easy to please). Please don't
ask me for names it was years ago and i forgot. I do remember there
used to be a page on the web somewhere with a long list of different
packages. Try as many as you can before you put your money towards
one.

Also consider support and update scheme. Again, i can only talk about
Target and Eagle (Orcad was a student version so no support or
updates). I only used the eagle support once and they prompty replied
(but only had to say "no can do"). I used the Target support several
times and they are OK, they implemented a couple of features i
suggested but also ignored me once or twice, but most of the time they
really try to help. They expect you to pay for an big update about
once a year (or two years?), roughly half price of the full license.
Small updates in between are free. I can accept that, implementing new
features and support costs money so they can't provide free updates
forever. Rarely you will find a software company which will even
consider adding a new feature for a single license customer so overall
i'm fine with that scheme.
Eagle updates? What's an update? I suppose there must have been
updates at some point, because my version is 4.something so there
ought to have been earlier ones. Doesn't look like Bill had invented
windows yet when they made that last update though, or they just
didn't notice, or bother to care ;-)

Libraries? Forget them. Orcad had the best libraries in my opinion,
with the others i prefer to make my own parts. It only takes a minute
with a decent software and you know it's exactly what you want. Make
sure parts are easy to make and the whole library thing makes sense
and is well thought out. Guess how many points Eagle scores on that
last sentence.

Do i sound negative? Sorry about that, no slander intended.

ST


On Nov 14, 2007 8:15 PM, Peter Harrison <peter.harrison@...> wrote:

> Such as...
>
>