Rick, Thanks for the comments on Eagle.
I have been frustrated trying to learn Eagle for a small urgent project recently. I ended up using ExpressPCB and the attendant schematic capture. While it uses proprietary file format and is therefore locked to one vendor, it was surprisingly easy to use. I created a schematic and a double sided RF PWB in a couple of weeks with minimum reference to the documentation. That was my first PWB design. I intend to learn Eagle for future projects though, as I need the capability to generate Gerbers at least. I tried KiCAD but I found it unfriendly and I do not like the way the schematic symbols look (I like my resistors wiggly, not rectangular, call me old fashioned...) If someone only needs a simple schematic capture tool, ExpressSCH from ExpressPCB is hard to beat. You can easily edit or create new symbols and the printouts look good and professional. Didier KO4BB Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless thingy while I do other things... -----Original Message----- From: "Rick Karlquist" <rich...@karlquist.com> Sender: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:21:39 To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement<time-nuts@febo.com> Reply-To: rich...@karlquist.com, Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement <time-nuts@febo.com> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Schematic capture, anyone? Jim Hickstein wrote: > What do people use these days for schematic capture (and just possibly PCB > > worse, I prefer ANSI logic symbology over shovels-and-spades (or, really, > over > plain rectangles where you're expected to know what the part number > means). > I'll add another vote for Eagle. It is a German program written in Unix, and ported to Windows. Therefore, you select the action first then click on the object of the action. It takes some getting used to. There has been a pattern of PC layout companies getting cobbled up leaving you with an orphan program, or an upgrade to some very expensive program. Orcad and Protel go gobbled up. Eagle did too, but by a distributor, Newark. They just came out with a new improved version. You can finally draw arbitrary SMT footprints. I think that was the major limitation of the old version. You can of course draw your own symbols any way you like. I have been using Eagle for 5 years now and never looked back. One other drawback of Eagle is that it is difficult to move a design between computers, and there are issues with the way preferences are stored. If you use a part from a library in a design, you are forever locked into that library. Many other CAD systems have these issues. Mentor used to be terrible about having absolute path names, etc. Rick N6RK _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.