[sdiy] Free CAD (was: Proteus software)

[Jay Schwichtenberg]

Several things come to mind for me at a hobbist level.

You may want to do two versions of the board. One SMD and the other thru
hole. So you have to have two copies of the schematics one with SMD
attribures for the components and one with thru hole. So now you have two
copies of the schematic to maintain. They can get out of phase and cause all
sorts of problems if you aren't careful.

Another thing is you do the schematic, make a board and go oops need to add
a few more components. So you put some new components into the schematic and
then go to the board. Some packages I've used have really barfed on that. In
some cases they just couldn't handle it and in others they screwed stuff up
so bad that you had to do the boards over anyway. Things might be better
with the software that's out there today, don't know.

One thing I remember with a package I can't remember is that when you put a
trace down that became the 'rubber band link' or node link. When you deleted
that trace there was no 'rubber band link' or node connections and you had
to put the nodes back in when you redid the trace.

Jay S.

-----Original Message-----
From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl
[mailto:synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of Ingo Debus
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2011 8:11 AM
To: Synth-DIY DIY
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Free CAD (was: Proteus software)


Am 21.02.2011 um 00:00 schrieb Ian Fritz:

> FreePCB allows you to do board layouts from scratch without  
> schematics.

You can do this with Eagle too. You can even buy a layout-only  
version, without schematic entry.

But what's wrong with drawing up a schematic first?

Ingo
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