Designing PCBs - what tools are you using?

I've been investigating free PCB design tools other than Eagle.

TinyCAD and FreePCB seem to be viable options.

• http://sourceforge.n...ojects/tinycad/
• http://www.freepcb.com/

Has anyone in the netduino community been successful designing PCBs with these tools?

What tools with component libraries would you recommend using for small scale projects (no more than 2 layers)?

Thanks,
-Fabien.

I haven't tried myself yet but it's installed, maybe you want to try out fritzing. fritzing.org From breadboard to PCB with just a click they say.

What tools with component libraries would you recommend using for small scale projects (no more than 2 layers)?

You might want to check out KiCAD or gEDA.

Eagle/Altium is what I use. There's also Design Spark, might be worth checking out.

You can find Design Spark (quite new, i haven't yet tried it though) here: http://www.designspark.com/pcb




Eagle is at http://www.cadsoftusa.com




The nice thing about design spark is there are no limits, like eagle has. Eagle limits board size and layer count like crazy, even on paid versions!

Thanks for the great feedback everyone! I have to say that Design Spark seems quite promising.

I use diptrace (paid for version), however there is a freeware (300 pin limitation) and a non-profit version (500pin limit - i think you have to email them for this one). http://www.diptrace.com/download.php http://www.diptrace.com/nonprofit.php I tried to use eagle and designspark, eagle was just wierd in its UI and i really didnt like its pcb layout part. Designspark was a lot better in the schematic, and the pcb layout was ok but i still prefer diptrace. One thing i found about diptrace was repositioning/resizing 45degree tracks was a lot easier, eagle and designspark would tend to mess them up if i tried to adjust them. One thing that is great about eagle however is the ammount of part libaries for it, however both designspark and diptrace can import them.

I am using KiCad on Windows7 x64 SP1 & Ubuntu 10.04.2 x64. The user interface is exactly the same for both Windows and Linux since it is Java program. The Windows install is very easy and the only addition install on windows is the 3D viewer which is from, and is available via apt-get. The progam is very simalr to Eagle, but will handle multi-layer boards unlike free Eagle. The 3D viewer uses .wrl files created in Wings and there are shapes for almost every package shape already included. There is also a good user group on Yahoo.com should you run into any problems or have questions. It had been several years since I had done a layout and am very surprised at how powerful the tools have become. Back in the late 80s and early 90s it was how I earned my paycheck. I started with routing with tape and then used a DOS program Tango which was purchased by Pads so I then started using that product before changing careers. KiCad comes with very complete set libraries for both the schematic and layout programs with DIP and SMT parts. Foot print association is via the net list with cross association if entered in the library. If not there is a tool to set all the foot prints and then place them in the PCB. I found adding parts is a little tricky at first, but once I got the hang of it it is very easy. There is no integrated auto routing, but does use FreeRouting at http://www.freerouting.net/ should you need to use it. There is a pop-up utilty for the dsn file creation and ses file import back in. I started doing layouts again for personal projects, and would have no issues using KiCad in a production environment. The current version is very stable and I have no had any crashes or bugs to report. These are a couple of 3d captures of a small board I did for the RAID card in my home file server. The RocketRaid 2300 does not provide standard two pin LED status indicators, they are open collector connections. This is mounted on a 5-1/4" drive bay blank and works great. My current project for my Netduino is an attemp to read signals from a LSI MegaRAID SGPIO port and convert them over to a set of indicators on a layout as well or an LCD display. Since it I am more of hardware persion I am just learing C# and having a great time. http://kicad.sourceforge.net