pcb design package

[Fraser, Colin J]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Heiko van der Linden [mailto:h.j.vanderlinden at el.utwente.nl]
> Sent: 14 June 2000 16:44
> To: synth-diy at node12b53.a2000.nl
> Subject: pcb design package
> 
> I've was wondering which are good capture/autorouter 
> packages?

With autorouters it seems to be a case of getting what you pay for. Anything
good seems to cost a fortune.
I prefer to route my own boards anyway - it's a good cross check of the
schematics, and by the time I'm finished, I usually have the entire layout
memorised so I can populate the board without looking at the schematic too
much.

> I have been looking at eagle, protel 99SE and ultiboard and
> some problems I have seen is that the output created by 
> ultiboard is not the quality I expected to get. It gives 
> edges on corners 
> and tracks. Another problem is that the router generates a 
> lot of vias which are not nice to drill.
> Protel 99SE looks very nice but it doesn't generate output 
> with holes in the pads so it makes life very difficult if you
> have to drill the holes in a prototype.

I use and recommend CircuitMaker and TraxMaker - http://www.microcode.com

One very nice feature of TraxMaker is that you can over-ride the hole size
in pads and force all holes to be printed at one size - to give a guide for
manual PCB drilling.

Colin f