> While I don't know the orginal poster from a the next guy on the
> street, I do share Mike's skepticism on the "I've been dealing
> with the limitations of eagle for making pcbs for a few years
> now, and finally hit a problem I could not resolve." It is
> likely to boil down to one of three options:
>
> 1. The 'problem' is real but actually tiny, and the OP's idea of an
> 'unresolvable' problem takes 5 minutes to figure out with Google.
> 2. The 'problem' is imaginary, totally manufactured to stump the
> OP's agenda, paid or not.
> 3. The near zero % chance of something that doesn't fall into the
> two above options.
>
Hi Alan, nice to meet you, I'm Richard, the OP.
The problem falls into section 3. I'm making a PCI-104 board with a
lot of high count surface mount parts, and I need at least 4 layers,
and probably 6.
>
> It's one of the least limited programs I've ever used. A bit
> obtuse on how to do some things, but that's what Google is for.
> And at least when you get past your own 'teething' of how to use
> it, it's potential is already largely there. Not some far off
> thing you want that may never even be programmed in..
>
I've been happily bitching at eagle since sometime in 02, and I agree
with your assessment: it's a very capable program. But the hard
limits on size and number of layers are hard limits. I did RTFM, and
I am posting about kicad because of my own agenda, which is to help
other hobbiests overcome problems that have beat me up.
Kicad is free ware, I'm not a developer, I am not a seller, I am not
associated with it in any manner other than being a user, though I am
considering getting involved in the development, if I can ever get the
components to all work together in VS2005.
Thanks
Richard
P.S. I do believe in a healthy dose of scepticism, and agree with
your list of 3 possible problems, I just always tend to be about 3
sigma, so I get to fall in section 3 most of the time.