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

My favorite freebie is proprietary from one of the U.S. board houses.
ExpressPCB.com (Not PCBExpress .. different company.)

It will print 1:1 =non-watermarked= printouts of any layer .. or combinations
of layers. There are a few caveats, however. It also will export a 1:1 DXF
file of the layout (layers selectable) .. pads and/or text only, no
holes/hole
centers or traces. It will also export a BMP of the design (all layers), at
selectible resolution, which can, I guess, be used for documentation.

The accurate 1:1 scaling only holds true as long as one doesn't 'crowd' the
page.
The program scales the entire layout window to fit the page. If it figures
there's too much to print 1:1 on your chosen paper size it will shrink-to
-fit. But, at least it it doesn't automatically -enlarge- a sparse window
to fit a
page. As long as one doesn't have too much laying about the layout area
outside
the designated board area (extra copies of parts, pads, etc.), and/or your
paper
size is adequate, it will print at an accurate 1:1, and all should be well.
May
take a bit of fiddling to discover what the boundaries actually are for
whatever
you want to do, tho. None of the documentation tells you the parameters (of
course).

The scaling can neither turned off, nor set by the user (except as noted
above), nor can a selected area of the layout window be chosen for printout
.. it's all or nothing. Every part, trace, etc., the program sees in the
window,
inside or outside the board-layout area, will be printed. But, I figure
that's
a fair tradoff, in a free proprietary program, to be rid of the grid-pattern
'watermark' this program used to print along with the traces.

Matter of fact, I've only very recently discovered they'd changed the
program. A friend needed some jiffy-quick commercial-quality PCB's (which
I can't accomplish myself, quickly or not), so, I figured I'd download the
latest
version of the ExpressPCB program and then order the boards from them.
Which I
did. And the boards are as nice as one would expect. Beautiful. And now I
know the
program is useful for my own home-brew boards, too. Which are usually pretty
simple.

As I said at the beginning, the program is very proprietary. It saves in their
proprietary (as far as I know) .PCB format. The only file needed to have them
make boards. It won't export Gerber or any other useful-to-other-vendor
files.
It also now has a somewhat rudimentary schematic-capture module, too, which
saves files as .SCH, but I didn't use it very long, so I don't know more about
it. I laid out the PCB's manually, which wasn't difficult at all. Quite fun,
in fact.

I haven't used this program for years because of the watermark grid it used
to print. Though I'm not sure why they 'turned it off', I'm grateful.
At least I ordered a few boards to pay for it a bit. :)

BTW: The ExpressPCB website gives their address as Santa Barbara, Calif.,
just south of where I live .. however, the boards were made in (or at
least shipped from) Mulino, Oregon.

Ron Yost .. NO 'connection' with ExpressPCB at ALL.