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spruce_moose wrote:
I remembered another thing that drives me crazy about Eagle. The whole footprint/part creation feels like a workaround for the awful UI. People seem to act like making parts takes a couple minutes, but every time I have to do it I have to relearn the whole unintuitive process because it never stays in my head.

i used to find it a bit annoying too but i think of it like this to sort of remember the process and not have to look at ada fruit tutorials or whatever:

what do you need for a part? probably something that will show up in the schematic and board and have some relationship to each other so...

1) draw schematic symbol (seems like an ok place to start)
2) either copy the pad layout from another library or draw a new one (a logical next step? what will show up on the board)
3) create the new part where you are basically combining the first 2 steps into a final part by mapping the schematic to physical pins on a package.

done. I think in the library editor this results in clicking on the 3 buttons from right to left that deal with new parts/symbols. A helpful thing for step 2 is that you can open a library for editing, then go back to the control panel, find the package you want in another library and i believe either in a menu or if you right click the package there will be an option that says "add to library" or something like that and it will just add the package you have selected to the library currently being edited, so you can go straight to step 3 after that unless you want to tweak the package a bit.

Diptrace is lovely. I seem to be unable to read a manual, or almost anything in fact, and it's been pretty gentle with me that way. Once you find the main parts you like, you group together pads for specific stuff too (eg PCB mounted sockets) and just cut'n'paste. Also I start from a 'starter' PCB - ready to go with sockets, FSW, DC in etc already connected up, ready to be added to.

I am actually an Eagle fan. The learning curve is quite slow (there are many functions...), but you can find plenty of informations on the web, so if you face any problem, you are almost sure to find the solution in a moderate amount of time.

Also, the libraries are huge! You can find pretty any component there, even the weird-ones-that-you-would-never-expect-to-find kind of components.
Plus, there are already libraries that have been made for guitar pedal circuit tracing:
- gauss markov library : http://gaussmarkov.net/wordpress/tools/ ... libraries/
- madbean library : http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/inde ... pic=8293.0

I am planning on writing a post about eagle on my blog soon. It is really a great tool for guitar pedal making, especially if you want to make a small series (like 5-10 of the same kind), or a quite complex one with a lot of components (to avoid veroboard mistakes and false contacts...)

At some point, I used Fritzing because it was very simple, but the lack of libraries just made me quit and use eagle.

Omniglyph does everything I need very smoovly

I agree with everything everyone said. Eagle is the leader. Altium is better but expensive. The thermal stuff and rf stuff in altium is more for real engineers doing real shit. You do not need altium. Kicad can do unlimited layers, unlimited area. Its linux friendly, good with scripting, open source. Diptrace is by far the best if you want free, use windows and are ok with creating custom part libraries. With diptrace it is easier to make parts but harder to just download them in a library. Finding parts in the stock diptrace lib is a horrible experience until you make your parts. Fritzing is ok. Mouser has a pcb design software that will generate parts lists and order them for you. Has a built in spice sim also. Parts ordering is work. If you run a business then time is money.

^^ Great summary!

eatyourguitar wrote:I agree with everything everyone said. Eagle is the leader. Altium is better but expensive. The thermal stuff and rf stuff in altium is more for real engineers doing real shit. You do not need altium. Kicad can do unlimited layers, unlimited area. Its linux friendly, good with scripting, open source. Diptrace is by far the best if you want free, use windows and are ok with creating custom part libraries. With diptrace it is easier to make parts but harder to just download them in a library. Finding parts in the stock diptrace lib is a horrible experience until you make your parts. Fritzing is ok. Mouser has a pcb design software that will generate parts lists and order them for you. Has a built in spice sim also. Parts ordering is work. If you run a business then time is money.

digikey has one now too apparently

http://www.digikey.ca/en/resources/design-tools/pcbweb

there is also pads by mentor graphics on the high end, if you want to look into what money buys, it's interesting.

and i think sunstone pcb offers pcb123 still? another online pcb software for their fabv service...

If i remember pcb123 and expresspcb are almost identical. There are a few other fabs that offer proprietary software but i dont want to recommend them if there is a base cost of buying from a more expensive fab for prototype runs of 10

ya i don't recommend them but they are options.

i used sunstone once for 2 day service a few years ago. it was i think ~300 USD for 2 pcbs that were ~ 2 by 3 inches. They were here in 2 days which is pretty insane to me, considering at least part of a day had to be shipping. even then i did not use their pcb design tool though. i think those places serve a slightly different market than hobbiests looking for the cheapest/lowest qty you can make. as you said, time is money in some situations, so there being a "base cost" added may be worth it time to time.

This thread is great, I found Eagle's freeware to be really frustrating to do anything more than simple drive pedals plus I'm not filthy rich (or slightly wealthy), and don't design often enough to warrant paying for it.
Thanks so much, eatyourguitar and multi_s.