Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

DipTrace looks to be pretty good for my purposes. I was surprised and
initially disappointed when I threw a few components down, wired them,
switched to board ala Eagle, and printed out only a 2 11/16 x 3
3/16-inch board. Aha, board size limits of the free version, I
thought, since Eagle has the ~3 x 4-inch board size limit for their
free version. Not good...but then I read in the Help function that
board size can be specified at route time. Then I had another thought...

I made a new schematic, placed two components far apart on the screen,
switched to board, auto-routed, and voila! they came out on a 4 x
6-inch- plus sized board. The board size is tied to the extents of
the schematic, which seems a bit odd, but useful.
There are a lot of components in the libraries. I use mostly discrete
and analog semis, occassionally some digital, PICs, etc. The
component base in the generic transistor library is odd. For example,
the MPF102 JFET was not there, and it is very generic. However, the
desirable VHF JFET 2N4416 was there. Also, no Schottky diodes were
found in the Diodes library. Nor were the very generic 1N914 and
1N4148 switching diodes. The genric Diodes library consists entirely
of Zeners, unless I missed something. I did find all of these
components, some in several libraries, of the manufacturers:
Fairchild, Philips, Motorola, ST-Micro and Zetex.

The patterns (like Eagle packages) listed for the devices is very odd.
TO-18 and TO-92 were specified for several transistors correctly, but
I could find no instances of a TO-220 device package. I checked the
International Rectifier library, and for the TO-220 IRF3315 device,
the pattern description is SFM-3/W10.7, which looks to be a
dimensional descriptor for DipTrace; it's not a JEDEC designation.
Also, the National Semiconductor version of the common-as-dirt 2N2904
shows a different pattern than the generic TO-92 2N3904...BCY-3/D4.7.
In this pattern, the leads are in-line, rather than triangulated.
I've actually been converting some of my Eagle devices to use the
in-line package style, so that's OK.

The Microchip library lists only 16Cxxx devices. It is very
out-of-date. The Analog Devices library does not list the AD8307 log
amp, nor the AD9854 DDS chip, although it does list a version of the
AD9850 predecessor to the 9854. The Agilent library contains only SMD
LEDs.

As a general statement, DipTrace has more transistors in libraries
than Eagle. The International Rectifier library has hundreds of
listings, while the IR libraries in Eagle have about a dozen devices
total, although some IR FETs are listed in the FET lbr in Eagle.
Also, other semiconductor companies with transistors are
well-represented: Fairchild, Zetex, On-Semiconductor, Motorola, and
Philips. NEC and Toshiba did not have transistors; the Japanese
transistor lines (2Sxxxx, etc.) weren't there. In practice, however,
I simply change the name (Value, actually) of a similar
pin-out/package device in Eagle, and it works for me.

I could find nothing on the DipTrace site, nor in the license
agreement that said the free version could not be used for commercial
purposes, unlike Eagle's agreement for the Eagle Light edition, where
registration and USD $49 is required for commercial use of the
limited board size Light version.

The decision on whether to move on with DipTrace for me boils down to
how easy it will be to create custom libraries and copy the parts from
other libraries into them. I'll join the DiPTrace group for further info.

Ted