Homebrew PCBs

Hello,

Circad, primarily. By Holophase. GREAT program! Can do it all, from 
Schematic, to pcb layout, to milling. Even allows you to reverse 
engineer from bitmaps/scans of existing boards.

 Also Eagle, and contour2(French) included trace isolation. VHF is 
another I useta use. Good program; German origin, isolation milling 
possible.

Hope this helps,

Ballendo

P.S. Circad used to be offered to Hams at a greatly reduced price. 
May still be in effect.

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "emailw8nf" <emailw8nf@y...> 
wrote:
> I've been a lurker on here for a while.  I haven't seen much
> discussion of the layout software we experimenters like to use.
> 
> The last time I did any "volume" of homebrew PCBs, I just used
> something like Microsoft Paint!
> 
> But now, it seems there are many freeware or demoware software
> packages available for this work.  I'm curious what people tend to
> use, and what the particular benefits are of the package chosen?
> 
> I've been using QCAD - has its ups and downs.  Good news it can 
output
> a Gerber file, which can then be manipulated in any Gerber viewer, 
and
> printed/zoomed, etc.  Also it ties together the schematic and the PC
> board, so once you're done with the schematic, you go to layout, 
move
> the parts around, and place traces to satisfy the rat's nest.  But a
> lot of this is clumsy, and doing re-work is very tedious.  It's also
> very time-consuming to create anything other than 90 degree straight
> lines with any accuracy.  For those of us who are trying to roll out
> PC boards for things like 300 watt UHF amplifiers, that limitation 
can
> be a killer.
> 
> What do others use?
> 
> Kindly,
> 
> Dave