Electronic Design Automation

[Lunat1c]

Hi. What EDA do you guys use? I'm used to working with Proteus but was wondering if there's some better options out there

[lamja]

I use FreePCB for my simple PCB's. Freeware, and really I really like it. Simple, unlimited and full control.

[EEVblog]

Altium is the industry standard in Australia and China.

Dave.

[Simon]

I'm using expressPCB but will hopefully move to KiCAD

[Lunat1c]

thanks for your input guys. I've heard a lot about Altium, maybe I'll try the trial version of it.

[slburris]

I use Eagle mostly and I'm currently trying out the Design Spark software.

I think I'd like Altium if there were a hobbyist version :-)

Scott

[EEVblog]

I think I'd like A!tium if there were a hobbyist version :-)

So would everyone, but unfortunately that does not look like happening, they abandoned that market a long time ago.

Dave.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I use PCAD - Altium's sort-of predecessor (actually started off indepoendent as ACCEL, got bought by the then-Protel, which morphed into Altium, I think...). When they announced they were discontinuing it a couple of years ago I did a last-time upgrade to the 'final' version. The sales guy kept pestering me with special deals to upgrade to Altium but having tried a demo version immediately took a dislike to it as it appeared hugely bloated with stuff I was never going to use - all I need is a simple, reliable PCB-only tool, whearas Altium seem to think that a huge megalith which does everything from PCBs to mechanics to FPGAs to re-tiling your bathroom is the way to go, and they don't care if that's not what their users want.
When I told the sales guy I wouldn't even be interested if it was a free upgrade he stopped bothering me....

[EEVblog]

I use PCAD - A!tium's sort-of predecessor (actually started off indepoendent as ACCEL, got bought by the then-Protel, which morphed into A!tium, I think...).

PCAD was always a separate tool, and was maintained as such for some time.
The current Altium Designer comes directly from the original Protel/AutoTrax/PFW/DXP lineage.
Some PCAD code may have made it over, but I don't think it's much, if any.

When they announced they were discontinuing it a couple of years ago I did a last-time upgrade to the 'final' version. The sales guy kept pestering me with special deals to upgrade to A!tium but having tried a demo version immediately took a dislike to it as it appeared hugely bloated with stuff I was never going to use - all I need is a simple, reliable PCB-only tool, whearas A!tium seem to think that a huge megalith which does everything from PCBs to mechanics to FPGAs to re-tiling your bathroom is the way to go, and they don't care if that's not what their users want.
When I told the sales guy I wouldn't even be interested if it was a free upgrade he stopped bothering me....

And they took their (old) "turning the world of electronics design upside down" slogan literally. The PCB part is the optional extra, it's only part of the "full" package.
The base package has FPGA, Schematic, Embedded et.al.

Dave.

[djsb]

If Altium bought out Labcenters Proteus VSM it would have support for discrete processors and that really would mean it does everything.

David.

[EEVblog]

If A!tium bought out Labcenters Proteus VSM it would have support for discrete processors and that really would mean it does everything.

Altium already supports C and C++ on a bunch of discrete processors. ARM, MIPS 4K, 8051, etc with the Tasking compiler.
No simulation of those though.

Dave.

[RayJones]

Totally off topic, but "Tasking" made me think it is pun/throw back to the heritage of Protel (Tasmania). "Tas King"

The reason this crossed my mind was when I recently came across Kvaser's CAN monitoring software "canking" on a HDD.
I wondered what the hell is cank-ing, then it hit me when I ran the software - CAN King. Duh!

As I said, totally off topic - resume normal programming.

[EEVblog]

Totally off topic, but "Tasking" made me think it is pun/throw back to the heritage of Protel (Tasmania). "Tas King"

Never realised that!
They still have a Tasmanian operation, that's where the component libraries are done.

Dave.

[DJPhil]

They still have a Tasmanian operation, that's where the component libraries are done.

This may sound weird, but I think I'd really enjoy doing parts libraries all day as a job. I'm having enough fun tidying up my KiCad library that I'm stretching it out on purpose.

I've always been a bit weird, to each their own I guess.

[Varal]

A!tium is the industry standard in Australia and China.

Dave.

Any info about other countries? A!tium is popular in Poland too (probably because the major electronics magazines use it for their designs) but during one of my labs at uni I've been told that Pads is the current world standard. (Can't believe it though - GUI from the middleages and every option has to be selected via right-click not to mention poor component libs)

[jahonen]

A!tium is the industry standard in Australia and China.

Dave.

Any info about other countries? A!tium is popular in Poland too (probably because the major electronics magazines use it for their designs) but during one of my labs at uni I've been told that Pads is the current world standard. (Can't believe it though - GUI from the middleages and every option has to be selected via right-click not to mention poor component libs)

PADS is pretty much the industry standard here in Finland. Most large (and small) companies use it. There are some users of Zuken CadStar also in addition some users of Mentor Graphics BoardStation. Signal integrity simulator included with PADS (higher end packages), HyperLynx is also widely used by DDR (and similar) memory industry for their simulations. It has been extended to simulate power planes (voltage drops and noise) recently.

Lack of pre-made libraries has been traditionally no issue, since we usually make the PCB land patterns and schematic symbols ourselves anyway due to convention/stylistic issues, although it takes a while to enter/check those BGAs with 100s of pins.

Regards,
Janne

[jimjim]

I'm currently using an open source package called Geda http://www.gpleda.org/index.html - it looks really similar to Kicad.

It's quite powerful for a free package.......and thus far the interface has proven to be super intuitive. You can also do massive boards with many layers and components - without worrying about running out of room!  

The Geda community is very supportive too

I'd love to try out Design Spark, it seems everyone is ranting about it at the mo, but I'm a Unix only fella, so - until they bring it out on Mac or Linux.....................I'll be giving it a miss.  

[Varal]

You can always try and emulate via virtualbox