This useful comment thread showed up in relation to a post about a chainsaw repair, which would hide it from any rational collection of search terms. Here’s the thread in all its glory, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to move comments from one post to another.
Feel free to continue the topic in the comments to this post…
randomdreams
Offtopic: have you ever used gEDA for schematic or pcb? I’m looking for something with reasonable abilities, and the crippled demo versions of orcad, eagle, and winqcad all look fairly crippled. I’ve zero use for autorouters and autoplacers (because they suck for analog design) but it’d be nice to have something that’s fairly usable for schematic and layout.
Ed
used gEDA for schematic or pcb?
Nope. Every time I’ve looked at it, the status seems to be heartbreakingly close to being useful by someone who really doesn’t want to work around a morass of limitations. That’s becoming less true and maybe by now it’s practical… but I haven’t done a serious examination for maybe a year.
I actually coughed up half a kilobuck for the Standard version of Eagle schematic & layout, as an autorouter doesn’t do much for the little bitty boards I build. Works fine, no complaints, but if I weren’t doing columns and suchlike, it’d be hard to justify.
Neal H.
andomdreams,
I have used it for both a small project and a slightly bigger project,
http://www.instructables.com/file/FPCHBLIG1M2BQTH (schematic)
http://www.instructables.com/file/F6SYDYYG1M2KI8M (render of layout)
It is quite usable, but the version that ships with most linux distros is pretty old, I had much better luck building it from source following the instructions on the gEDA homepage. The hardest part is creating symbols for the PCB tool, that is a little tricky to learn, but there are a lot of them pre-created for you on gedasymbols.org.
randomdreams
Thanks to both of you. I’ll probably give it a run. I currently spend much of my day creating symbols for Cadence, and I consider it impossible for any other part-creation process to be as painful or difficult as that. I’m more worried about general usability. Eagle’s the back-up plan.
John Rehwinkel
I still haven’t found a PCB layout program I like (and I’ve gotten tired of the truly primitive one I wrote 20 years ago). For schematics, I use DesignWorks Lite, which is apparently no longer offered (though DesignWorks Professional is still available).
John Rehwinkel
Ah, it is still offered (only $40), just not at the main Capilano site. The companion PCB layout program is Osmond ($200), which I keep meaning to try out. You can download the trial version at designworks4.com.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
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5 responses to “On Schematic Capture and PCB Layout Programs”
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I’ll give a quick summary of the ones I use.
Cadence schematic is usable, but a bit painful. Cadence layout is a joy, once you get past the learning curve. For routing ease, I’ve never used anything like it, and the two sides communicate well, which is wonderful: being able to click on a component in schematic, then going over to layout and having it already selected and moving, makes intelligent placement incredibly fast and efficient. However, Cadence Librarian, for creating new parts, is less fun than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Although I don’t use autorouters, when I’ve tried out the Cadence autorouter I only had to rip out about 40% of what it did, which is far better than any other I’ve played with. Layout is scriptable with LISP. Strongly schematic-driven.
Altium, nee Protel, has a good schematic entry side. I find the layout side fairly frustrating. It will allow you to do what you think you want, but will bite you severely later when you realize you didn’t actually get what you thought you wanted. It’s hard to select groups. Librarian is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Layout has some query-based rulesystem that can allow for intelligent rules-based customization. Strongly schematic-driven.
OrCAD, formerly a separate product but now an entry-level Cadence product, is limited but has some really superb features. Schematic is okay, similar to LTSpice in some ways. Layout has some limitations but has a spreadsheet system that allows you to rapidly and precisely place pins (in librarian) and components. Flash/pours can be selected and prioritized easily. Librarian is easy and quick. Autorouter is an abomination against nature. Mildly schematic-driven: you can add stuff in layout and sometimes back-annotate into schematic, which is useful for bodger-based engineering. Reasonable integration with pspice.
PADS is quick, feels like OrCAD. It does some odd things, like adding teardrops everywhere without being asked. Schematic is manageable. Layout is okay, although making or manipulating flash/pours is an exercise in frustration.
Eagle, I’m still learning, but librarian seems fairly easy, schematic has some intelligent shortcuts and seems fairly easy.
altium can read and work with pads-based schematics. OrCAD and Cadence can exchange schematics and netlists. None can handle any others’ layouts. All can handle previous versions’ layouts, although if you try and open a Protel layout in Altium it’s going to take a couple hours of work.
I hated what little I did in Mentor Graphics, by the way. It was extremely unpleasant.
A contribution from someone who wishes to remain thoroughly anonymous…
I’ve used both gEDA and PCB for years.
[snippage]
The PCB autorouter is good, and the new toporouter is going to be better.
The Windows port needs lots of work.
There is also XCircuit, which does have better quality schematics. It does have problems with creating net lists.
Tim created a port of PCB called PCB 3.0 in TCL/TK. It is not as up to date as the current 1.999 PCB.
For some reason they never update the version number, don’t know why.
There is also KiCad.
I’ve spent a couple days working with gEDA now. It’s primitive but seems usable. Project setup is fairly easy if you’re familiar with command-line, and feels much like working with older AutoCAD, since the underlying setup is LISP, apparently. The schematic side is reasonable, reminiscent of OrCAD. Wiring is easier than in Cadence. Drawing new schematic symbols is easy, esp. if you modify existing ones.
Exporting into the layout side was difficult because it relies on the dbus interprocess messaging system, and on my system the stock dbus can’t handle windowing applications so I had to debug the failure and install dbus-x11, but once I did that it worked fine. Placement and routing works, although it’s somewhat primitive. Building new footprints is pretty easy, although it’s primitive in the extreme: all you get is pads and silkscreen, as far as I can tell. No separate assembly or place bound outline, no keepouts, no height. I have yet to try copper pours/areas or producing and verifying actual gerbers, and I haven’t tried using the integrated pspice simulator.
If you have access to a $5000 layout program like the ones I’ve already talked about, they’re better, no question. But if you’re on a budget, so far this looks fully usable and it doesn’t even look slow, just limited. There are a few really painful limitations: no back-annotation, so it’s entirely schematic-driven. No repackaging: if you need to swap functions within a multi-unit IC for better routing, again, it has to be done in schematic and then propagated. You can’t beat the price, and it can build big complex boards, unlike the freeware versions of commercial layout packages. It’s also easy to learn.
Sounds definitive to me; they’ve made progress from the last time I checked!
I’ll stick with Eagle, though, mostly because I can slide the schematics directly into Circuit Cellar’s editorial workflow.
since the underlying setup is LISP, apparently
Man, I distinctly remember forgetting all about Lisp.
Thanks for the update…