Eagle or Kicad and why ?
>>988958
anyone ?
>>988958
Kicad
Free
>>988976
im more interested about usability.
>>988992
well if you haven't paid for it you can't use eagle for anything over some size, like a credit card size or something.
>>988992
basically they are both useable i guess
if you need to design anything other than relatively simple then you won't be interested in either
>>988958
non-pirate Eagle will only do single layer boards up to a certain size, it's basically useful only as a learning tool
kicad is aight but has a steep learning curve and tends to bug out, plus the autorouter is complete shit
>>989013
what do you mean ? are there more advanced softwares ?
>>989116
Altium
>>989173
wait until you see the price tag
>>989188
how much ?
>>989191
$7500 upfront, then $1750 each year
>>989197
I should add, that's the sticker price but they do offer a lot of discounts to education, small business, etc.
However it's still far from hobbyist price range
>>989200
I'm surprised no one has funded kicad or another open program due to altiums insane pricing. There's nothing overly complicated or unique about the program.
>>989358
despite the insane price they're doing well, so that program has to have something.
>>989358
KiCAD is funded by CERN
>>989443
nope
>>989446
I stand corrected: They don't fund it, but they contribute majorly: http://home.cern/about/updates/2015/02/kicad-software-gets-cern-treatment
>>989066
>vast majority of hobby projects
not every hobbyist is stuck on arduino level, kiddo
>>989447
They are, like many other users, helping the co-development. Wouldn't exactly call it a major contribution.
The few times I've needed to do layout & generate a Gerber I've used GNU gEDA.
I would not recommend it.
>>989448
some1 designed a slow motion camera (w/ SoC, FPGA, DDR3 etc) in kicad
If you havent learned Eagle or KiCad yet, DipTrace is a pretty good option. Will def be able to get more miles out of DipTrace than Eagle...havent tried KiCad myself.
What I find strange with Kicad and even high end products like altium is they are really just crude 3d modeling tools with some schematic and other tools.
But if you compare them to modern 3d programs they are about two decades behind in UI. I could build a 144 lqfp chip in the 3d programs I use in under 5 minutes try it in any of the PCB programs and it might be an hours work or more.
Then they are missing all kinds of things like instancing identical components so you can change properties all at once, cloning objects in arrays, mirroring etc.
Then there's routing, I think if you built it as a 3d model you could use voxels and GPGPU code to brute force routing better than any human layout.
The current PCB programs will never get anything like that because they're all moderately evolved versions of programs designed for the 1980s.
>>989699
>144 lqfp
>it might be an hours work or more
How the hell you manage to waste hours drawing an LQFP? I would understand it bit better if you were talking about the schematic decal, where you have to name/number those 144 pins, arrange them in nice sensible groups, decorate then with clock/invert/etc. symbols and possibly fill in design rule check stuff too, but the PCB footprint is trivial. Or at least it should be.
>products like altium
Altium had a whizzard for making QFPs and some other basic shapes ages ago.
>so you can change properties all at once, cloning objects in arrays, mirroring etc.
Altium and several others allowed those ages ago.
>you could use voxels and GPGPU code to brute force routing better than any human layout.
Is this just your fantasy or is there actual evidence that such approach would work/make sense on PCB autorouting?
I agree that many PCB editors have sucky, old-fashioned UIs, but in this case it sounds like you're using a shitty program. Or maybe you're a newbie and haven't found the relevant tools yet (which can be buried pretty deep in the UI).
Just pirate Altium.
>>989018
the free eagle can do 2 layer boards 80mmx100mm. It is fairly small but I've only ever needed a larger board 1 or 2 times
>>989699
you do know you can import 3d step files into altium, right?
Let me throw one out for EasyPC. Their model is to package everything separately so you can buy what you want. For example: you don't have to pay for an autorouter, gerber import, or other stuff you won't use unless you want to buy it.
It's about $500 for the software with 1000 pins, unlimited layers. or $800 for unlimited pins/layers. It's pretty intuitive, making components is pretty easy, and it also has a 3D modeler like some more expensive PCB design packages.
The catch is that you pay for what you pay for. so if you want to upgrade to the next version when they release you have to pay like $100 to upgrade, and if you don't buy any of the component libraries then you have to make them yourself (not hard, but most newcomers will make mistakes here).
There's some doofy things about it, but really it's good alternative to the standards that require multi-thousand dollar licenses per chair and required paid yearly support.
Altium is not worth mentioning to anyone who doesn't work for a large company actually designing products for market. Even if you were designing for your own company Altium would be considered incredibly expensive.
Really the best is to try the free versions of the various softwares, and ultimately go with whichever is the most intuitive. If it takes you 5 hours to learn how to make something simple in one, what it takes you 1 hour to learn in another then the choice is incredibly easy to make.
>>990409
it literally looks like a shitty ripoff version of altium
