[sdiy] PC board from artwork?

[Gordonjcp]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 09:18:17PM -0700, rsdio at audiobanshee.com wrote:
> In the beginning, EAGLE was (seemingly) the only option for OSX. Then KiCAD, which is free, came out after I bought a full version of EAGLE. There might even be more options besides EAGLE and KiCAD. I believe that EAGLE is still free for smaller boards like this one, especially single-sided and even double-sided. I've heard people who've used both say that EAGLE is a little bit more reliable than the totally free KiCAD.
> 

Diptrace, although I don't use it.  I tried Eagle but it was such a PITA to get anything out of the "free" version that I gave up on it.

> Personally, I think it's well worth the effort to learn one of these tools so you can share your designs. An hour of work can be uploaded to OSHPark and then shared for other people to build the same projects at their own expense. There are many other ways to spend an hour working on a single board, but the end result cannot be easily used by others unless they put in the same amount of time. Something that puts out standard Gerbers is the way to go.

The other nice thing about Kicad is that all the board and component files are plain text - just plain text, telling it what line to draw where.  This is ridiculously compatible with version control systems, so you can keep your PCB designs and custom libraries in Git without having to replace entire binaries every time you update them.

The problem with PCB layout software is that when you start using it, it's really, *really* difficult.  Not only have you got the learning curve of the software to cope with but you've got the learning curve of how to lay out PCBs to cope with!  If you've done a bit of PCB layout before it's undoubtedly easier, but it's still hard to get to where you want to be.

If you're learning to play the guitar, it's hard to write your own songs as well.  Far easier to learn a few chords and bash out some Oasis songs until you've got the feel of it, right?

So do the same with your PCB software.  Find an existing well-designed board (hello yusynth.net) and do a "cover version" of it.  Draw in the circuit, lay out the PCB.  Maybe tweak the PCB a little, see how it affects how you draw it.  Play with it a bit.  You'll find this a lot less frustrating than just jumping straight in and trying to figure out everything at once.

-- 
Gordonjcp MM0YEQ