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PCB Design Software

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nye

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Could anybody tell me a good PCB designing software that a beginner could use..also it'll b very helpful if its a free one...
 
Are you looking for software that is very easy to learn and can only be used with a single online PCB manufacturer? Or a traditional PCB layout software where you can produce the electrical schematic and then lay out the physical PCB? The former is easy:

www.expresspcb.com
www.pad2pad.com
www.pcb123.com

The latter is...very...very...expensive...to the point you might need to resort to shady methods to get it. If you don't pay enough, you get junk. OrCAD is one of the good cheaper one at a $10,000...legally that is. Also much harder to learn.
 
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im lookin for one tht is easy to learn..wht i hope is to produce the PCB layout, and then make the PCB's myself..so is express PCB good then???but is it simple to learn??
 
Yup. Those are fine then. With PCBs built with that software, only the company that provided it can use it. So make sure to look at the prices of the boards you plan to build, rather than the software. The PCB price will be the primary design criterion.

But you said you want to make the PCBs yourself...I don't know about that. Look at the software to see if you can print the stuff out...it might not allow that. The expensive stuff obviously will.

You don't get to make the electrical schematic and then layout the PCB- you just get to layout the PCB so you have to be careful not to mix your connections up in the potentially messy PCB layout.
 
How complex of a board do you need to make? My very first PCB was done by hand - marker on bare copper clad board (didn't turn out too well obviously), and the next one I did was manually laid out on some generic CAD system. After that I gave up and had my boards built by fab houses - learned Orcad (university had lots of resources), followed by Protel (cheap, USD ~$3K license). I never learned PADS (not sure if they're still around), and I haven't tried Eagle (free starter version)(yet).

Do you have a project that you need to complete? Do you have some idea of the budget?

James
 
hmm..its jus tht i want to start makin a few circuits..making simple ones first and then goin on to more complex ones..i think express PCB enables u to get a print out of the layout, so i was plannin on goin with tht..but mayb its better to get it ordered..is it possible to plan a PCB layout jus with the circuit diagram only??and without any layout designer??
 
You mean to use a circuit schematic to manually layout the physical PCB connections? That's pretty damn hard to do the second you start to use any IC.

You could just use a solderless or solder breadboard. Or wire wrap.
 
I really like diptrace. It is cheap at ~$100USD or so. You can create a schematic and then go to a pcb pretty easily. It has an autorouter also. It does not function like $10000 software, but I think it works pretty damn good for the price.

There is also eagle, but that drove me up the wall after using it for about an hour.
 
dknguyen said:
You mean to use a circuit schematic to manually layout the physical PCB connections? That's pretty damn hard to do the second you start to use any IC.

I never said it was a *good* idea, just that it's doable. The other thing that is pretty common when doing one-off prototypes is to just take a copper clad board and a dremel tool and hack away until you have a circuit board - works pretty well for very small surface mount prototypes with 1 or 2 chips.

The question is of motivation - do you want to learn how pro's build circuit boards, then it's going to be expensive - both in terms of money and time. Plus every time you send out a circuit board, it's a reasonable chunk of money and time. On the other hand, if you just want to hack together a circuit, breadboards/wire-wrap/rats-nets wiring/"dead-bug" prototyping are still good skills to know.

James
 
i was thinkin again with all these problems of using either dot-boards, or vero boards..with vero-boards u hav to scrape the copper off some lines so tht there is no connection right??
 
It's not as troubling as you make it sound. All it takes it a slice across the trace with an exacto knife.

Personally, I REALLY like the Busboard for soldered perforated boards:
**broken link removed**

1. It's lead free!
2. It has an pre-connected holes in an staggered interweaving pattern that let you run a lot of IC pins away from the IC. You can break up traces with an exacto knife to get what you want.

3. A LOT cheaper than other interweaving pre-connected boards (like the kind with the zig-zag interweaving pattern).

4. It's produced in the city next to mine.
 
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i dont think busboards are available where i stay!!!must inquire and c..1 st time im hearin abt them..mayb i'll go for veroboards then..all it needs is a slice across the trace between 2 points that have no connection between them right??otherwise it can be kept on in order to reduce the amount of wiring needed right??between dot-boards,vero boards and PCB, is the easiest,fastest and cheapest vero??
 
Just find a board arrangement that you like and can afford. I'm just telling you what I prefer (interweaving patterns) which tends to get really expensive (which is why I like the Busboard soooooo much).

All that is needed is a cut between the traces...but remember things about high frequency and radio circuits- the parasitic inductances and capacitances from the extra traces (cut or not) will not allow the circuit to work. You need to build a dedicated PCB for something like that. Basically a lot of the same problems when prototyping radio circuits on a solderless breadboard.
 
yeah..will take all tht inot account..must experiment and c and then decide wht i prefer the most..
 
Could anybody tell me a good PCB designing software that a beginner could use..also it'll b very helpful if its a free one...
 
As I said earlier, the free version of EAGLE or there is a freeware version of Diptrace. I did not say there were freeware versions earlier but you would have found out quick enough, if you would have looked into the things I said ;)
 
Do not double post the same question. You can use the edit button to change your question if you need to add something.
 
Wow, a couple mentions of Eagle free version. I would not even bother with those basic layout programs. You have nowhere to expand to when you start doing more complex work with actual schematics. They are dead ends.

Just download Eagle from www.cadsoft.de and run thru one of the many many basic tutorials out there. The interface is truely terrible and non-intuitive, but once you get the hang of it, you are set to go for your more advanced projects. It will also produce gerber files that are accepted by any PCB manufacturer.

If you want to, you can even just pick and place parts and skip the schematic if you want to.

If you are looking for even more basic than that, just buy a breadboard, or stripboard like mentioned above.
 
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