Free schematic and pcb design programs

29 Apr 2008 15:49:16

Rene

Hello to all of You!

I am planning to sink my teeth into a "electronics CAD suite" in a not so
far away future. I have used ulticap and ultiboard back in the days they
still were DOS appz, I even bought a 80387 copro for them ;-). Not necessary
to say that the version I still own is a bit dated now.

What is important, as it is only a hobby (and I am Dutch ;-), is that it is
free. Open source is preferred by me but not a demand. It is highly
preferable that the suite can be used both in windows and Linux, though not
a demand either. If not cross-platform, I prefer a windows program but it is
fairly important that it will run in 98SE as the computer I have in my hobby
room is very old, 98SE runs great on it (much faster that Xubuntu) but I
expect it to be too old for XP or 2000. This does not mean that Linux-only
is out of the question.

I have already done a lot of reading on the web and KiCad, which I have been
looking at a couple of years ago (it contained too many bugs back then to be
of interest to me) and the gEDA tools are of particular interest to me.
Free, open source and KiCad is cross platform. gEDA is officially Linux only
and I don't judge myself to have enough knowledge to make it run under
windows (at several places I have read that theoretically can be build for
windows, perhaps with Cygwin, anyway, I do not feel like doing that). Linux
only would do as well though it is not preferable.

Furthermore I have found out that gEDAis much more flexible/powerfull but
also more difficult to get into than KiCad. I do not mind having a steep
learning curve as long as it is possible with some engagement by me. I will
probably be using it for a long time so it is an investment.

I am not going to do very sophisticated things. What is of utmost important
to me, and that is my main question, is that the suite is _reliable_. Every
program contains bugs but how often do You stumble upon them when using
these programs?
Very important as well is that there are libraries with many, many parts in
them and an easy way to add new components.

I bought the program "Frontdesigner" program from
http://www.abacom-online.de/html/produkte.html,it was not expensive and is
a great tool. This company sells a schematic capture program and a pcb
editor as well but they do not cooperate, for me, that is a reason not to
buy them (judging from the quality of the Front plate design program, I
think they might have suited my demands, this is however too big a
short-coming). So that is something else that is important to me: I have to
be able to enter the schematic and then use that to design the pcb (check
connections a.s.f.). But I also want to able to draw a pcb without being
obliged to use a schematic. It does not have to be KiCad or gEDA.

I would be very pleased if You would express Your thoughts/experience
concerning the things I have been writing. I am especially curious when it
comes to stability/reliability of the different programs, the level of
sophistication is less important.

Thank You very much in advance!
Yours sincerely,
Rene

29 Apr 2008 11:24:58

DJ Delorie