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From: bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: CAD/PC layout wanted for mac
Message-ID: <234@dmsd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-May-86 15:49:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: dmsd.234
Posted: Mon May  5 15:49:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 11-May-86 04:45:10 EDT
References: <316@chinet.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: DMS Design, San Luis Obispo Office, CA
Lines: 37
Summary: Bishop/Douglas PCB drafting package

We have used the Bishop/Douglas package here on the Mac to do about
a dozen boards ranging from a 200 hole 2 layer proto board to a
2,500 hole 4 layer 60020 system. The human interface is ok, the editing
interface needs a little work, the output is GREAT from a photo-plotter.

I cost us about $700 to generate the film for the SBC20 board and
about $2,000 for a proto run of 5 systems including the motherboard,
memory cards, and I/O. It took about 3 months part-time to do the placement
and layout the boards inhouse -- much of which was design iteration
to overcome the high density -- 2,500 pins with three 32bit busses in
a 6" by 11" form factor using 13mil traces on 25mil centers.
The gerber film was very clean, and the boards fab easy.

We have done several boards by check ploting on the imagewriter 4X and
shooting the listing front lighted 50%, and backlighting the film for another
50% reduction. This drops out most of the pin holes in the printer
artwork and generates good medium quality 2 layer boards with about a 5%
placement accuracy -- fine for proto 2 layer runs. Similar boards cost about
$30-$60 to photoplot which is by far the best way to go if not in a rush.

Bishop will do film turnaround from either modem or disk in a few days,
or faster if a rush. The 3.0 software release is MUCH faster and handles
much larger boards than we have done. I would like to see better functions
for handling lines and pads --- a draw like interface would be great.
It's present interface is very simplistic. It saved us several times it's price
in the layouts we have done to date, ... it's worth the price. We haven't
used any of the other packages, but phone calls to their sales teams
don't seem to yeild any outstanding reason to buy a new package either
(IE. they aren't significantly faster or have much better functionality).

The support people at Bishop (Tim and Mary) have been great in helping get
some rush film conversions done ...  I'm a happy user ... 
-- 

John Bass (DBA: Fastime, DBA:DMS Design)
DMS Design (System Design, Performance and Arch Consultants)
{dual,fortune,polyslo,hpda}!dmsd!bass     (805) 546-9141