- Sun May 25, 2008 5:05 am
#48949
OrCad schematic capture is still alive but OrCad PCB is being phased out. The popular and easily obtainable 9.1 or 9.2 is getting a bit old now and lacks many necessary features for newer board layouts.
Eagle is fine is you are doing a few very simple boards, but others have already mentioned just a few of its shortcomings.
Things like Altium-Designer, Pulsonix, Cadence Allegro are the best, but expensive. But sometimes licences for older versions had be had pretty cheaply on eBay and even something 5 or 6 years old form them is a much easier to use package then Eagle.
The Geek
Lucien wrote:I think the simple rule here is that you can't expect a whole lot for free! Over the last couple of years I have had to deal with Eagle, Pulsonix, Altium Designer, OrCad (the real OrCad at about 9.2 and the 'new' one at v16 or some such), PADS and a couple of others. My employer has just started the conversion from OrCad to PADS - and I find that PADS and it associated products is way way too expensive for what you get - and far too clunky in many ways.joelotz wrote:I agree, solid information solodex! Thanks!!At the risk of ruining a perfectly good thread...
This thread has run it's course, so let's call it good.
Leon, do you have any experience with Easy-PC? I understand that shares some DNA with Pulsonix.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a copy of EAGLE schematic+layout modules - high end software like Pulsonix is more than I need, and out of my budget. But for Eagle, v5 has been released, and their prices have jumped 30%, putting it head to head with the entry level Easy-PC.
That said, I've gotten pretty decent with EAGLE, though some things still bug me, like not being able to bring up properties of a track in the layout editor and be able to type in corrected values. I wonder if they've added that in the latest version.
OrCad schematic capture is still alive but OrCad PCB is being phased out. The popular and easily obtainable 9.1 or 9.2 is getting a bit old now and lacks many necessary features for newer board layouts.
Eagle is fine is you are doing a few very simple boards, but others have already mentioned just a few of its shortcomings.
Things like Altium-Designer, Pulsonix, Cadence Allegro are the best, but expensive. But sometimes licences for older versions had be had pretty cheaply on eBay and even something 5 or 6 years old form them is a much easier to use package then Eagle.
The Geek