What software do you use to design your PCBs?

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Sushi
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What software do you use to design your PCBs?

Post by Sushi » Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:02 am

I'm talking @Helder, @Kite, @Wermy, etc. I've got a really cool (secret) project coming up. I've gone through a few (free) PCB designers and have been frustrated with all of them. I'm now willing to pay as long as it just works. I'm looking at Eagle, though I want to know what y'all are using before I make a decision.

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Re: What software do you use to design your PCBs?

Post by tinkerBOY » Mon Apr 02, 2018 1:25 am

I use Eagle with my PCBs.
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Re: What software do you use to design your PCBs?

Post by Helder » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:25 am

I use Eagle as well and there tons of tutorials and libraries out there for many parts.
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Re: What software do you use to design your PCBs?

Post by peachy.s » Fri May 04, 2018 2:30 pm

I use kicad for personal projects, and a lot of work projects. For bigger projects (10+ layers) I'm lucky enough that my company has some Altium licenses for use.

Overall I think I prefer kicad as the open source library has a ton of really well made parts and the features of kicad are really remarkable. Though Altium is really nice and streamlined, the price tag is just ridiculous for personal use. That and making foot prints for certain ICs is a pain if it's not an IPC standard one.

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Re: What software do you use to design your PCBs?

Post by moosepr » Fri May 04, 2018 3:20 pm

kicad is the most free!! it is open source, so it is totally free. Eagle is free for non-commercial usage and the free version is limited by board size and number of layers, but i doubt you would run into those limits to quickly.

they both have weird quirks, i fell into the eagle rabbithole and so am kinda stuck in it now. There are lots of tutorials and pre-made libraries for both. If you have the time, read through all these, they are very good and informative

https://hackaday.com/2016/09/21/creatin ... roduction/
Get a small cheep LCD in your project https://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2312
Wrap it all round a battery https://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2292
Or use a custom PCB to make it really small https://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2512
or make it really really really really tiny!! https://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2919

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Re: What software do you use to design your PCBs?

Post by snoek09 » Sat May 05, 2018 4:08 am

kicad as it's open source. I've used this video series to design a single button breakout board;

https://www.udemy.com/kicad-pro/

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