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Schematic/PCB Design for Linux?
VanessaDannenberg asks: "Occasionally, I have been known to design the occasional circuit board. I've been using Eagle, but with the board size limit of 3x4 inches in the free version, and a $400 price tag to exceed this limit, it is time to consider a Free Open Source Software alternative. Not being a Linux programmer myself, I have checked into and ruled out gEDA, KiCAD, Electric, XCircuit, and a host of others as being too incomplete to replace Eagle. My requirements are pretty basic: Draw a schematic, make a board out of it, edit and autoroute it, export to Gerber, and do it all natively within Linux. So, with this in mind, what suggestions do you folks have?"
I do not know of anything like what you ask. AFAIK, gEAD is the best thing out there.
Unfortunately, this is a bit of a niche application.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I don't know where it comes from, but I've got something called 'pcb' that I installed on my Linux box that, as far as I am aware, meets those requirements.
Oh. Here it is:
http://bach.ece.jhu.edu/~haceaton/pcb/
KiCAD Check it out.
http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/
Note that he's also asking for a free autorouter! While you're at it, why not ask for a free 21" color monitor? For a library, router, gerber out and everything on your list, $400 is peanuts. Its paid off on one board design.
The free way to do this is get a resist pen and blank copper-clad and just draw your circuit right on it.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
about the whole open source movement.
"$400 price tag to exceed this limit, it is time to consider a Free Open Source Software alternative."
So in other words, you're not willing to pay the programmers who support their families for this product, and you are not willing to donate anything to an Open Source project.
You sir, are a leech. You want a product for free, not because of a moral issue, a desire for community support, accessible developers, or any other OS reason. No, you want an OS product because your greedy little heart wants something for free.
-Rick
A little over the top? maybe, but I've had a crappy week. I'm going to go home, get drunk, and forget the last 4 Mondays.
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It's not clear from your writeup whether you are making the boards yourself or farming them out once you have the design. I've had to do a couple of boards recently and I use the ExpressPCB online service; there is no board size limit, and while it doesn't autoroute the free CAD tools they provide are clean and easy to learn. They have an extremely cheap miniboard service for small projects and can also do 4-layer boards with silkscreening for a pretty reasonable price even in low quantities. There are a couple of other companies offering a similar service. The software tends to be Windows but you should be able to run it under Wine, and the price is right because they are making their money on the board fabrication.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Don't be so pessimistic. Some people give back to the community in forms other than cash and software. Maybe if he designs something useful, he'll share it with the world. Commercial tools present a high barrier for entry to the hobbyist, which discourages open source hardware.
The only program I have found that satisfies your requirements (except the linux part) is PCB123 (PCB123.com)
/ 0125.html
It looks like someone is trying to get it to work under Wine:
http://www.winehq.org/hypermail/wine-bugs/2004/06
Since this bug is so old maybe it has been fixed by now.
Of course the downside of PCB123 is that you don't get a Gerber file, you are required to use the PCB123 board fabrication services. I personally think they are pretty good so don't mind being tied to one vendor.
You can home build two layer board for less then 50$, using laser printer, transparency, some chemicals, UV light and board bought from local electronic store.
I'd try to feel sorry for you, but having just spent $775 to get the full-on Professional version of Eagle (with Linux and OS X licenses), I just can't muster any pity. I earn money by using Eagle. You can get a 100mm x 160mm, 4 layer version of Eagle for $125, as long as you aren't making a profit using it. If you are making a profit with it, either you can afford to upgrade to a for-profit version, or else you aren't charging enough for your work. You can also upgrade at any time with full credit for previous versions.
Now, I'm sure that all the gEDA people will tell you that you can help make their project do all you need it to... but I'm not really a programmer, nor do I have the time to become one - I'm busy earning money to feed my baby. I've contributed (a very small amount of) code to the kernel, I've contributed financially to open-source projects... but there isn't always a viable open-source solution to your software needs. That's when you need to pay someone for software that already works.
You want to design boards using Linux, you probably need to be using Eagle. Sorry. Consider either a) using the non-profit version or b) getting the for-profit version but not the autorouter - Eagle's is very good indeed (FAR better than Protel's, IMHO), but you'll almost always get better results hand-routing anyway.
Frankly, even at $400 Eagle is a bargain.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
So he makes 8 boards less than his original idea of production then.
Oh my God!
Whatever will he do?
If you're designing PCBs, $400 should be chump change-- right? I'm used to EDA packages that cost well over six figures per seat.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
So, if you evaluated all of the free PCB design software out there and none of the ones worth mentioning fit your needs, then why are you even asking?
Use some logic here. If there was some up-to-date, well-maintained, and open source PCB design program that trumped all the ones you mentioned, wouldn't you have run across it already?
There sure have been a lot of these questions on Ask Slashdot recently.
Well, if his original production plan was a single board, he'll just ask slashdot for a F/OSS alternative. (And get flamed for being a leecher in the process...)
Downmix - The Artscene News Source!
Personally,I see no problem with paying for software if it helps you out, especially if you're working in a commercial environment. The fact that there is a lot of OpenSource/Free software out there is a -bonus-.
To date, despite running with OpenSource, I've purchased Win4Lin, VMware, QCAD, numerous other small ( $50) packages and recently MainActor (though MA was a bit harder to justify), it's part of business, while the upfront costs can bite, if you've thought it out and you _really_ need it, then it pays off very quickly.
It would seem that living in an OpenSource environment makes it harder for some people to remember that there was a time where paying for software was very much the 'norm'.
Anyhow, back to the whole topic - If $400 is too much to pay (or $125 as someone else pointed out for the non-commercial version) then either (a) you're doing this as a hobby, (b) you're semi-serious and need it to make the 'jump' to doing some more serious work, (c) you're a commercial entity but are expecting too much.
And I'll say it again. But no one listens. The fact that there are so many incomplete projects says alot. With Sourceforge, it should be easy for people who want the same software to collaborate on a SINGLE project. Does every one want the privilege of being the head honcho like Linus? The main problem with this kind of software is the drudge work of keeping up the library of devices,not doing the interface. That is why there are lots of started projects and not to many that really get finished. Let's face it. It isn't just this project. Check out Sourceforge and see how many similar projects you can find. Diversity is good, but if it means nothing gets finished, then maybe not so much?
I didn't see where she refused to pay or donate. She merely said that $400 was too much for what she does (occasional user). $400 is a bit much for, say, a student or casual hobbyist, and not everything will fit on teh tiny board the free version handles. For instance, a fairly simple tube amp needs a large board because you need bigger traces for the current, more space for the larger components, and more board space between traces because of higher voltages. But someone who does one or two tube amps a year may well not want to put out an additional $400 for the software. $25 to $100 would be a lot more palatable.
Reading Eagle's website I realized that they actualy offer a cheaper (Read $125.00) version for people who are using Eaglecad for non-profit purposes.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Are you kidding me? I do this stuff for a living on the expensive tools ( Allegro, PADS, etc) and if I was caught whining about 3x4 inches, I would be ridiculed :)
With that said, what exactly it is that you are wanting to do that takes up more than 3x4 inches. Is the fab shop you are using so low tech that you can't do a 4(mil trace) & 4(mil space) board and therefore are unable to properly place/route the board? Also, how many nets are we talking about here that you would need an autorouter? Are you using any BGA packages? How many layers is the design? Do you have any controlled impedance requirements? Differential pairs? Your post is so very light on details. More than likely the other linux tools aren't enough for you because you want the software to do it all for you (eg. requirement: autorouter). Having used KiCAD and having looked at gEDA, those tools are more than adequate for the hobbyist. The only places where they wouldn't be adequate is if you had some sort of project deadline and you have a couple thousand rats to kill that of course are all bowties on a dense monster of a motherboard that is already going to require you to spend DAYS just splitting the ground and power planes to get the damn board connected. If you are doing shit like that, then I would highly recommend that you get into the niche market, buy some software like PADS from Mentor, and do the boards quickly. Otherwise, quit whining! To hand route a 3x4" shouldn't take long at all depending on density and layer count.
Bleh. The Eagle autorouter is next to worthless. It can't do autoplacing, and it's not very smart. Unless all your boards consist of less than 10 through-hole parts, it generally can't route them worth a damn. Real autorouters cost a lot of money for a good reason. The one built into Eagle is a toy.
I like the PCB program. It integrates well with gschem (much better than how Eagle does it). It's a lot less buggy than Eagle (no annoying boogers and redraw bugs). It resembles a professional PCB layout tool a lot more than Eagle does. With a bit more work, it could easily compete with Protel.
VMWare Player + Windows 2000 (or XP) + Visio
I need it for a few college classes, but they gave out copies of XP and Visio for free so that didn't cost me anything. Thank's to VMWare Player I don't have to dualboot anymore.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
bittorrent is your friend
I think the simple answer is that there is no package available that meets the poster's needs. Those that are available at no cost (FOSS) don't have the ease of use and power that's requested. Eagle seems to be the only thing close to the price range. I haven't used it; I have used "pcb" with success. Its interface is a little funky, but not counter-intuitive. And it is under active development, with a user group list that sends me 20+ emails a day. In particular the requirement for autorouting presents a high barrier. It's a high-end feature, but not really necessary for simple boards. A human being will almost always come up with a better layout than a machine, and for analog boards, autorouting is useless, because the design rules cannot be taught to the machine. If, as some have surmised, the person who originated the inquiry is a woman, the sometimes harsh and dismissive tone of some posts on this topic leaves me no doubt as to why there seem to be so few women involved with Linux. My thanks to those who have posted helpful suggestions.
BSA: "Would you like a free Software Audit"? me: "No, thanks. My software is all Free".
I've never met a good autorouter, although I've only seen the Orcad one and whatever it is that's built into Allegro. In every place I've worked they've been forbidden to use with good reason.
There's some magical force at play where the more complex the board, where routing by hand gets more painful, the more likely an autorouter will screw you up and cause a respin. At home, if I'm going to pay hundreds out of pocket just to get the board fabbed I'd rather not risk it. (Cost aside, there's the agony of hand solder, the blatant bribery and/or questionable ethics of convincing our contract mfg that it's "part of our high volume project, do it for free, please?", and the difficulty convincing my wife I've got to spin again rather than buy that couch she wanted...)
Routing by hand is almost always better, and once you get good at it, doesn't take all that long. The thing that NEEDS automation is creating schematic symbols & footprints. For real now, there's just no excuse for that.
Instructions????
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I've used Protel and Eagle on the same basic design, and found that Eagle's autorouter is both faster and less crappy than Protel's - especially the first few updates of Protel DXP, which had an awful autorouter. Protel kept leaving loops, routing all the way around the world to get next door, and took forever to do it. I wouldn't use autoplacing for anything important, so I'm not really concerned about that "lack".
Basically, I have to cordially disagree completely with your assessment of Eagle. It isn't the best interface in the world, but the number of bugs and the performance are far better in my experience than you've described. I intentionally and preferably use it over Protel all the time.
I guess that's why they call them opinions.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
PCB does do routing, albeit it is not perfect. But with a few traces done by hand it can get a hint.
Of course you can do the actual lithography yourself with acceptable results (Probably not 8 thou tracks, however), but without a decent layout package, you're never going to get far. For any electronic hardware that is complex enough to be non trivial, you haven't got a hope with a Dalo or Sharpie pen, except for resist touch ups. I can't imagine how PCB layout must have been before CAD came along. Personally, for hobbyist use, the free version of Eagle does everything i want it to do. If you're into commercial production, then you should cough up the money for commercial software. It's worth learning how to design a board well, and doing without the Autorouter wherever possible.
Draw layout using any software you like, and print it on transparency.
Buy two layered board from local store (Active?). Then buy UV sensitive chemical, unfortunatelly I can not remember the name, but you can find it on Internet. Dip board in it, glue transparency on the board and expose it to bright UV light for half hour (this depends on the chemical you used).
Remove transparency and put board in acid (you will have to use trial and error to figure out for how long, since it depends of type of acid you used as well of UV sensitive chemical).
If this is too complex, you can try hot iron. Take transparency, put it on top of the board and use hot iron to inprint ink from transparency to board. Then just leave it in the acid until it etches non-marked part of the board. You will still need to experiment with tickenes of the lines.
Well, Protel is a crappy entry-level package as well. I liked it more than Eagle, but it definitely is far from perfect. The thing that gets me in both of them is the amount of work you have to do just to move a component or shove some traces around. With Eagle, it's almost always easier to just start over, especially if it's a dense surface-mount design with lots of short segments. Once you try Allegro with its interactive routing, you will never want to go back to doing it the hard way.
With that said, I think autorouters are mostly a gimmick. I suppose they can be useful if you have an 8 layer board and 1000-pin components AND it's something like SPECCTRA where you can specify signal integrity constraints. Anything less than that is just useless and usually results in a suboptimally routed board. In my experience, autorouters are especially bad on 2-layer boards, since they can rarely route them successfully and you end up with a board that's impossible to finish without starting over.
Note that the OS X version of Eagle really isn't professional grade. It is downloaded as a "tgz" file instead of a disk image and requires X11 to operate. It's basically a half-hearthed conversion of a Linux version.
As a user of the OS X version of Eagle, the fact that it runs under X11 instead of in aqua does not diminish the program's usefulness. Sure, nice things such as Mac OS X print drivers, inline spell checkers, common dialog boxes, and pretty widows are nice, but they are not necessary in the least. Installation is a breeze if you follow the steps in the readme. It is still the same "professional grade" as used in Linux and Windows!
Mac OS X print drivers That's seems pretty important, especially for schematics. Installation is a breeze if you follow the steps in the readme I did. It complained about something missing when I tried to run it. Typical Linux based program. If they expect me to pay $400 to replace my old Tango that I already paid for, they have to do better. But I doubt they care.
Well, Protel is a crappy entry-level package
Geez, they don't price like "entry-level". In comparison to what?
I'm sure there are even more fancy electronics design systems, but calling Protel entry level seems a little excessive. Middle of the range perhaps...
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Was it by chance looking for the license file? Just click the browse button and point it at your EAGLE-X11/bin/freeware.key.
The problem is that creating good symbols is a bit of a black art, in choosing how to lay out the pins and whereabouts on the symbol to put the buses. I don't see anyone automating it in a sensible way any time soon, unfortunately.
PCB now comes with a whole bunch of parameterized footprints now, though, which are quite nice. Also, a number of footprint-generating scripts for various types of footprints are out there -- you just have to look for them. However, I haven't yet found a footprint that _wasn't_ already available in PCB...
Pirate Party UK
MUCS-PCB http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/apt/projects/tools/ mucs-pcb/
- multi-layer auto-router with Gerber Output
- input is a netlist... like the kind KiCAD's eeschema can create
problems: not for complex/high-speed designs (if u need BGA devices, matched-length traces/impedences, etc. you NEED high end tools like Altium's Protel DXP/Designer or OrCAD)
What problems did u have with KiCAD? I've done several hobbyist designs in KiCAD and it has met all my needs. It takes a while to get used to its quirky UI, but after that you can do a LOT with it.
KiCAD has a (very simple, alpha version) autorouter, Gerber 274x output, multilayer, full design flow, etc.
Also, its text-based files allow you to easily do complex editing (like changing all pad sizes for a given part) with a simple search-replace text tool (like the one found in the FOSS tool Scite http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html)
Good luck.
The reason an auto-placer is usually bad is because it is incapable of seeing the "big picture". I would think that placing a few key components like the big chips would allow an auto-placer to do a very reasonable job in putting the resistors and caps in mostly the right places.
When I place a design manually, the small things get in the way, and sometimes I put a few of them in the design before I'm ready for them. And then I forget to move them, sometimes leading to long traces all over the place when I'm done routing.
Well, I think the Cadence stuff is something like $20k to $30k per seat, and possibly more. I'm not entirely sure, but that's the numbers I heard thrown around at work. Plus the maintenance fees and such. I'm pretty sure Protel is quite a bit cheaper. The two main high-end PCB layout products are from Cadence and Mentor. The low-end products are quite suitable for many companies, namely the ones that either have simple designs or not many products. However, if you need to layout complex multilayer boards with high complexity, you will need high-end software. Of course, it's amazing how expensive product development can get: a single large PCB with lots of layers and a short lead time can cost upwards of $30k to manufacture. So yeah, there is a huge difference in how much different companies are willing to pay for software.
Mod parent up! It took an AC to write one of the only constructive posts in this thread. Although I also actually paid for the full version of Eagle and consider it the best money I've ever spent, at least the above thread tried to give the guy a FOSS solution.
For what it's worth, though, Eagle rocks! Another poster commented about the difficulty of cad software makers to maintaining parts libraries - I think the better question is the ease of making your own parts libraries in your chosen CAD software. Eagle makes it easy, which is nice when you're using the latest obscure part in your design. Add that to a well thought-out interface and pretty good auto-router and Eagle is definitely worth the money.
Life is but a mist upon the horizon.
I do a lot of EDA, mostly under Mentor Graphics PADS. It's quirky, it's buggy, but I find I'm used to it and I actually almost like it.
But for whatever reason, our department seems to be unable to purchase a seat (license) for it that doesn't expire. Which means that my designs become uneditable unless our department mails Mentor a check every 12 months. It makes me sick.
I really want there to be a good FOSS solution, and like the initial poster, I've found the existing products to be really inadequate. Some that I've tried (and I've forgotten names now) do not even properly maintain connectivity of parts as you move parts around in schematic capture. Others rapidly turn your schematic into a terrible mess because they don't redraw your lines right. These are not terribly hard things to implement, but it takes time, and evidently, the FOSS solutions haven't had that much time put in to them yet.
To those who believe that autorouting is "a high end feature for high end users", I disagree. If you're making a simple board that will never need to be revised, then sure, route it by hand. But if you're doing lots of revisions, an autorouter is a critical tool. When I design boards, I spend extra time making sure that the autorouter can always route it. That way, when I need to pop down a couple extra (whatevers), I just hit F9 and it reroutes again.
I think one of the most awful aspects is that gEDA keeps promising and promising. They have very nice screenshots and feature lists. But they seem to be vapor. I think they're inhibiting others from starting a good FOSS EDA package. Maybe.
See: http://pcb.sourceforge.net/
I've used it for some fairly complex multi-layer boards. I prefer to do the schematic on paper and manually route it, but autorouting is supported. One warning: some of the symbols are wrong. In particular, the (default) holes in the pads are too small for most resistors.
> I think one of the most awful aspects is that gEDA keeps promising and
> promising. They have very nice screenshots and feature lists. But they
> seem to be vapor. I think they're inhibiting others from starting a
> good FOSS EDA package. Maybe.
Huh?
1) I don't recall the gEDA project promising anything. Please point
out a specific instance of this? It has enabled many people to
use EDA software that would otherwise be completely unobtainable.
2) vapor? What do you base this statement on? Please check out the
http://geda.seul.org/ and more specifically the download
page at: http://geda.seul.org/download.html
If you want to see lots of examples of successful hardware projects
built with gEDA please check out:
http://geda.seul.org/links.html#projects
If anything the website, feature lists, and screenshots
unadvertise the capabilities of the gEDA suite.
-Ales
http://geda.seul.org/
:-)
If you hadn't posted as AC, I'd have added you to my Friends list!
My suggestion for the original poster is (as others have said) PAY the $125-$400 for Eagle. We need more commercially supported software on linux (**), so help by supporting a company that makes products for linux!
Cheers!
--------
** RMS wouldn't aggree with that, but I think Linus would!
return 0; }
OrCAD's sucks. Cadence/Allegro is not half bad. With everything I've used, though, it always seems like the best plan is to have it autoroute, then rip out about half of what it did, do the critical circuits by hand, and let the autorouter go at it again.
I recently did an interface board that basically hooks two IC sockets of 80 pins each to a connector of 500 pins, no other components. OrCAD blew chunks. Allegro, however, did something in five minutes that with another two hours of tweaking, was very nice indeed: two layers, six vias. It would've taken me eight hours or more to do that on my own. I like good autorouters a LOT (by which I mean Allegro.) They're massive time-savers if used intelligently.
Sure would be nice to have that kind of functionality on linux for less than an Allegro license, but hey, that's what the money pays for.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
You can get a 100mm x 160mm, 4 layer version of Eagle for $125, as long as you aren't making a profit using it.
Er, I'm not sure you're right about that. The $125 version of Eagle is a non-profit version, which means that you can't attempt to make money off it. It's not like you can use the non-profit license to sell stuff as long as you don't actually go into the black.
From the non-profit license:
With this declaration I assure that the non-profit license of EAGLE I bought under my name will be used exclusively for non-commercial purposes.
Express PCB is a decent program, and it auto routes for you. Freeware.