You guys made me curious. I downloaded and tried Diptrace out (went
through the tutorial etc.). I do not agree that it is soooo user
friendly compared to Eagle (as strange as this may sounds). Don't get
this wrong. It's truly ok for the money but for instance, I particularly
find it clumsey to assign values to parts and make this visible in the
schematic entry program. You really have to go through too many mouse
clicks for such a frequent operation. I liked some other features though
(i.e. some more intelligence moving around parts that are already have
connections etc.). What I also miss (ok, might be that I just don't know
how to do it) is the ability to enter purchase department oriented
information for parts. I'm not totally fluent in english, so please bear
with me when I now try to explain what I mean with more words than
otherwise needed. Anyways, from personal experience I just know that
having the information ready to actually order parts for a production
run of a design is a painfull, time consuming process. I expect from a
modern CAD package some support here. Like being able to define
(multiple) suppliers for a part, entering price per quantity
information, datasheet URLs etc. etc. and having a process thereafter
that allows to make intelligent orders. Eagle has solved this with a ULP
(but IMHO that should be part of the base product but that's a
discussion we had already in the past).
What I also miss is a similar feature like the ULPs in Eagle. Well, one
should be able to "add" individual functionality to a package as it's
possible with Eagle. Diptrace does have the ASCII export feature which
could be used to modify the database and reimport, but that seems a
little complicated let alone the fact that the data format does not seem
to be documented (as oposed to Eagle). Doing layout work also is not as
easy as it is in Eagle.
However, I DO like the fact though that this seems to be a competition
for Eagle and I would recommend the package to someone looking for a
good package on a budget. Besides it seems to be a relatively new
product, so we may will see progress in the future.
Just my 2ยข of course.
Markus
Dave schrieb:
>
>
>
> phildimond wrote:
> > Dave - can I give you the same pointer someone else on this gave to
> > me? I've been down the KiCAD / AutoTrax / Eagle / etc path. Have a
> > look at DIPTrace: http://www.diptrace.com <http://www.diptrace.com>
> - has a 250 pin freeware
> > limit, but the pricing is quote reasonable for larger versions.
> >
> > Phil
> >
> Wow! I just installed this and talk about user friendly. I had it
> figured out in 10 minutes how to work it. Very nice indeed. Of course I
> will need to design my circuit now and see how many items are available
> in the libraries and if any are missing how to make them etc...Thanks
> again for the info. :)
> Dave
>
>