[sdiy] What's your fav PCB package?

[Daniel Kruszyna]

Robin Whittle <rw at firstpr.com.au> wrote:
> If I was going to take an interest in an open source program
> I would want it to be in standard C++ and run under Linux at at least.

Did someone say open source? :)

I use xcircuit for schematics and PCB for well, pcbs. Both were written
for *nix. There is also "gschem and friends" to create schematics with.
I prefer xcircuit because it is simpler and handles hierarchy well. Its
file format is actually a superset of postscript, so I can send my xcircuit
files directly to the printer. However, I have to create all my symbols, as
its library is limited (it was initially created for VLSI designs). Gschem
has a much better library, and also interfaces well with PCB.

There is another program Kicad which handles both schematics and boards
as one project like Eagle, but I haven't tried it yet. It uses wxwindows
and runs on both Windows and *nix.

-- Daniel

xcircuit:      http://xcircuit.ece.jhu.edu/
PCB:           http://pcb.sf.net/
gaf (gschem):  http://geda.seul.org/
kicad:         http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/