Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!emcard!stiatl!john
From: john@stiatl.UUCP (John DeArmond)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Recommendations for PC board layout programs?
Message-ID: <2904@stiatl.UUCP>
Date: 31 Jan 89 02:55:15 GMT
References: <2794.23E998F3@mailcom.FIDONET.ORG> <24950@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: john@stiatl.UUCP (John DeArmond)
Organization: Sales Technologies Inc., Atlanta, GA
Lines: 62

In article <24950@apple.Apple.COM> apn@Apple.COM (Alex Novickis) writes:
>in the PC world:
>	Orcad/Schema	- I have friends that swear by this, although I have
>			only played with it for a few hours and found it to
>			be east to learn and full of most features required.
>			this packeage is hopelessly copyprotected

I wonder how current you information on the copy protection is.  My copy,
vintage - about a year ago - is not protected at all.  I'll echo the
sentiments that it's a GREAT package.

>	EE designer	- I evaluated EEII and EEIII. Not worth the diskettes.
>			The manual would be usefull if printed on softer paper.

AMEN brother!!! this is the biggest piece of trash on the market right now.
written in BASIC, copy protected, a mishmash of keyboard commands and mouse
commands, SLOW and prone to crashing.  Plus it's hardware copyprotected.
The manuals are almost unreadable because of reproduction quality.  So 
poorly organized you use a linear search to find things.  It's really
easier to manually tape, even for revisions.

>	Wintek/Smartwork- this is a toy... works only on CGA.. supports ONE
>			plotter.

Again, AMEN.  They do now support EGA and a few plotters.  Actually, if the
package cost 100 bux and was not copy protected, it would do ok for quick and
simple hacks - probably better than some expensive systems.  As it is at 895
bux and copy protected, it's a no-brainer.

>	AutoCAD 	- Not really a CAD package fore circuit design, but
>			is a high enough quality package that it CAN be used.
>			lacks support for auto-routing or rubber-banding.

There are a couple of companies that make add-ons for autocad that do the
necessary autorouting and so on.  The AutoLisp programming language makes
this possible.  I don't have much experience with the overlay packages but 
I LIKE autocad.  Especially when compared to the above trash. (EE III & Wintek)

>
>in the MAC world	
>	DCAD		- Douglas CAD seems to be the only one on the market
>			currently that is a professional product.
>
>Alex P. Novickis, Real Time systems demi-guru.  (W)   408-370-4541

A collegue reports good look with Douglas CAD.  I don't do Macintrash myself
so I don't know.

There's another package called TANGO-PCB which looks good.  I've not used
it much but have a collegue who has done several boards with it.  He thinks 
highly of it.


Of all the ones I've used, I like OrCad the best.  The package is very 
intuitive and easy to use and it's FAST.  It's plotting facilities are 
pretty weak but are enough to get by.  I wrote a program to scale and
rotate plotter output which overcame the deficiences.  I'd expect OrCad
to fix this stuff fast judging by their response on the phone.
-- 
John De Armond, WD4OQC                     | Manual? ... What manual ?!? 
Sales Technologies, Inc.    Atlanta, GA    | This is Unix, My son, You 
...!gatech!stiatl!john                     | just GOTTA Know!!!