Cheap or free PCB CAD S/W & schematic capture

Re subject: I've a vague idea that this has been done recently, but
Dr. Evil stole my Google Mojo.

Are there any such things? Free is good but it must be possible to
enter a circuit diagram at one end, allow me to lay out a simple
doube-sided (four layers would be nice, mind) PCB and then produce
moderately standard Gerber files will do.

TIA HAND etc.

 

TinyCAD (free) or Proteus (demo)

 

You can download a free CAD 2D program off the Siemens website

 

I've got something like that installed at work; I'll try to remember
to look up the names tomorrow (e-mailing myself now...).

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

If it's a one off simple PCB send the circuit to me - I've got **** all else
to do with my copy of Boardmaker

Otherwise, I believe RS are offering a free PCB layout package or if there
aren't many component/nets there's a free version of Vutrax (steep learning
curve though).

 

Ta, but the plan is for it to be both a DIY DSP project and a CV
builder. After today, I sense a career change coming on.

 

gEDA seems pretty fully functional for schematic capture and even simulation
iirc. It's the most fully featured electronics suite in the ubuntu
repositories at any rate. I imagine it's also available for windows...

There's also another one in ubuntu called Eagle, again, dunno about windows.

 

What you like doing PIC firmware in C and assembler? Bit of digital design,
mainly PICs talking to CMOS camera chips, bit of multi-drop RS485, I2C,
possibly a little analogue from time to time?
We may have an opening as they say.....
Drop me an email jmbyrne_AT_greenyonder.co.uk* if you do have a current CV.
Cheers,
JB
*changing green to blue obviously.

 

Thanks, doesn't have to be Windows-specifc. I do have a laptop with
Ubuntu installed and a currently OS-free PC that could go either way.
Or both, if I can be arsed to figure out yet again how to dual-boot
it. I'ev a vague memory that says that Windows needs the primary boot,
err, thingy. See, it's been that long since I last did it.

 

Thanks.

 

That rings a bell. Thanks.

 

Noted, ta.

 

Grub about a bit on google.
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Unless you want to get fancy, it's best to install Windows first,
then Linux on top, letting grub take control of the MBR. If you need to
blow Linux away later, the Windows install disk lets you do an MBR
recovery. Make sure you have enough partitions set up before starting,
of course.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

That sounds fun and I appreciate the offer.

Unfortunately, with my current employer, I've spent the last four
years doing pretty basic scripting & produciton support of consumer
products[1]; it's been a few years since I've done any PIC stuff, or
C and assembler, so I'll be on a bit of a re-learning curve for the
next few weeks at least. But yes, the plan is to use a DSPic.

I'm also pretty much limited to commuting from the Newmarket area.

[1] I was interviewed for one job, but when I showed up for work, on
the very first week, I was hijacked by a more senior manager to do
something completely different and eventualy the original job sort of
evaporated.

 

I started out doing architectural drafting, then moved to CAD. I got a
job in a service bureau doing CAD for a variety of companies. Same
skills, different disciplines - civil, mechanical, architectural, and
electrical. When the company folded, I needed to decide what to do.
There were no jobs in civil engineering. Architects made good money
only after years of shit, and there are so many big egos to deal with.
Mechanical made good money, you could see what you were designing, and
the people were normal. Electrical was terminally boring, the
engineers were geeks, and you couldn't tell the difference between a
game controller and a nuclear trigger. Mechanical was berry, berry
good to me.

 

Good skills like these are always in demand. Nice to see someone prepared to
get stuck into hands-on design at home too.

We've used a few contract engineers working from home on various projects.
That seems to be the norm now. The 9-5 lab or offfice based guys are often
_not_ the best.

BTDT!

If you need a good electronics assembly firm to make your boards, speak to
Rory Gavin at Freedom Electronics in Newbury, Berks. A *top* bloke to deal
with. 01635 277688. Mention my name (John Byrne).

cheers,
JB

 

ExpressPCB and ExpressSCH (ematic) -- www.expresspcb.com

Don't think it does Gerber though; the menu has Export DXF/bitmap
drawings. There's an option to generate a "plot" (.PLT) file to manually
submit an order to them, but whether that's a proprietary format or
not I cannot say.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

I was doing precisely this yesterday. If you install Linux, then Windows
- yes, Windows takes over the bootloader. But it's then fairly
straightforward to use a liveCD (Ubuntu's on this machine) to reinstall &
configure Grub to give you dual-boot.

Looks techie - but follow the instructions, and it's straightforward.
Takes about five-ten minutes.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1581099

 

The gEDA collection of tools (gschem, gnetlist, gsch2pcb, pcb) work well,
are Free (as in freedom and free beer), don't have any arbitrary restrictions
on layers or PCB size, and produce gerbers/CNC drill files. PCB also has
several options for PostScript export if you're home etching a PCB
(PS bloat to fine tune the solder resist width etc. to match how you make
the board).

http://www.gpleda.org/index.html

There is a bit of a learning curve. File formats are all plain text rather
than some horrible binary blob, so you can also write scripts that
can manipulate the files which gives a great deal of additional flexibility.
The gEDA tools are a toolset rather than one big monolithic EDA package.

I've made several boards with gEDA from 2 to 4 layers from quick things
where I've just used PCB to make the pcb, and more complex things going
from schematic capture in gSchem to layout in PCB.