PCB/EDA software list

[tautech]

Great to see this list: bookmarked and thanked.

Neat to think you are still here and updating this since 2011. 

[technotronix]

Great Listing.

This is really helpful. You saved my time.

Thanks.

[Jeffw5555]

I started my career laying out PCB's in the early 80's, a number of my boards are still flying today in several military aircraft, cant say which because I was under clearance at the time.  Anyway, I started a company about 6 years ago and we sell equipment into a niche application, not a huge business, but keeps me busy.  At that time, I did a survey of most of the cheaper layout applications at the time, and finally settled on Sprint-Layout 6.0.  It doesn't have many bells or whistles, and it is totally manual, doesn't have autorouting, but does have clearance checking functionality.  I believe it is the most powerful application versus price out there.  (best value)  I am still blown away by the fact that I can create a board in a few hours, email the gerbers overseas, and have prototype boards at my door in a few days at a cheap cost.

One of the limitations of Sprint Layout is its libraries, I have needed to tweak a number of them and create a bunch of my own.  I was on the team that created the original IPC surface mount guidelines in the early 80's, so this is no big deal....

Since I am old school, I naturally comment that none of the programs I have seen can really assist a designer to create the optimum board construction, either in optimal routing, RF performance, design for optimal cost.   

[kasbah]

There is a new online Gerber viewer at http://viewer.tracespace.io.

It lets you inspect the layers as well as a preview rendering of the board.

[Inflex]

Not exactly sure where to place this, as it's more of a /repair-rework/ end software tool, but I'd like to suggest adding OpenBoardView to the list of software.  As the name implies, it's OpenSource (MIT licence) and it's for rendering boardview files.  If you've watched any recent Louis Rossmann videos you'll have seen it being used.

http://openboardview.org

Apologies if not appropriate for this section.

[scopeman]

How about Robot Room's Copper Connection?

It can read ExpressPCB files and can create Gerbers from them as well as create PCB's from scratch.

They have a Home Edition (free but no Gerber or Excelon), A Studio Edition for 49.00 with Gerber and Excelon , and an Ultimate Edition for 99.00, that outputs in open text format.

It looks like the Home Edition can print out direct to a laser for transfer printing with mirroring capability or direct to paper scaled 1:1 for positive/negative use.

Limited to two layers AFAIK but seems quite easy to use. I found the program when looking for a way to convert a design that I found on-line done in ExpressPCB to Gerbers

so I could import them into SprintLayout6.0 and edit the PCB.

See:

http://www.robotroom.com/CopperConnection/index.html



Sam

[AE2RO]

Have anyone tried the free Orcad Lite version?
I have just stumbled across it and would like to know if it is any good.

http://www.orcad.com/products/orcad-lite-overview

[hammy]

Please add:
PollEx from Polliwog http://www.polliwogeda.com
And from Daves video:
WinPCB https://www.csieda.co.jp/en/csieda/winPCB.html

[bitwelder]

Have anyone tried the free Orcad Lite version?
I have just stumbled across it and would like to know if it is any good.

http://www.orcad.com/products/orcad-lite-overview

It feels funny how much they stress that their usage license does not expire:

Unlike other free or trial versions of CAD software, access to OrCAD Lite does not expire. You can continue to use the lite version for as long as you want even after you upgrade to the full OrCAD suite.

I wonder whether the web page has always been like that, or whether they have updated after a certain CAD package has changed its licensing scheme 

[Robaroni]

I think we have to differentiate here, two groups, EDA for professionals or hobbyists.

[TheUnnamedNewbie]

Keysight's ADS is used for PCB layout aswell. I myself have used it a lot for RF microstrip filters (And other filters). Perhaps worth adding to the list?

[Deridex]

You might want to take a look at Horizon:
https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon
I think it can become a decent EDA software.

[DrAlx]

Please consider adding VeroRoute to your list of programs for stripboard/perfboard.
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/veroroute/
It's written by me.  The larger the user base, the quicker it will improve.

[PointyOintment]

I clicked on the link for Copper Connection, because I hadn't checked on it in a while, and it looks like it now belongs to ExpressPCB: https://www.expresspcb.com/CopperConnection/

They say they'll have it updated to work with ExpressPCB manufacturing within 60 days, but there's no start date on the page that I could find. All Copper Connection customers can get a free lifetime ExpressPCB Engineer Membership, which gets you 10% off some stuff and "free Gerber files". They also say that the current Copper Connection will continue to work, and apparently they'll even provide replacement keys for the current version in case you lose yours.


Horizon looks interesting. The user experience looks like it's better than KiCad, which is enough for me to hopefully never try KiCad a second time. It tries to do things "the right way", some of which I like and some of which I'm not sure about. A couple of examples: 1. It's netlist-aware in editing, which sounds nice because I like netlists for reverse engineering. But it doesn't consider identically named netlists connected, which sounds like it could make netlist-based RE more difficult. 2. Apparently it doesn't allow you to use generic parts that aren't associated with an actual part number, which seems like it would make going from ideas to schematics very inconvenient because it sounds like you'd have to stop your schematic drawing workflow to look up and decide on every single part before you can draw it. Anyway, maybe I'll try it.

[unitedatoms]

LibrePCB of librepcb.org released this December. May be it will turn into popular free EDA tool.

[Sergey Astakhov]

Upverter (https://upverter.com/) in 2017 joint Altium and became free for all types of projects, so it can be moved from "Commercial" section to "Free".

[nigelwright7557]

Don't forget PCBCAD51 and PCBCAD360.
Just a few pounds at https://www.murtonpikesystems.co.uk

[hammy]

Don't forget PCBCAD51 and PCBCAD360.
Just a few pounds at https://www.murtonpikesystems.co.uk

What are the differences between PCBCAD51 and PCBCAD360?

[nigelwright7557]

Don't forget PCBCAD51 and PCBCAD360.
Just a few pounds at https://www.murtonpikesystems.co.uk

What are the differences between PCBCAD51 and PCBCAD360?

PCBCAD51 was written in C# and PCBCAD360 was written in C++.
PCBCAD360 is quite a bit faster on screen redraws.
PCBCAD51 has some basic 3d rendering of pcb's, PCBCAD360 doesnt.
Otherwise they are identical.

[Styno]

The url for CAM 350 has changed to https://www.downstreamtech.com/products/cam350/

[nigelwright7557]

I hadnt realised there were so many CAD packages.
A lot of packages chasing a very few specialist hobby or business users.

With all the free stuff not much reason to buy unless you are doing very specialist stuff.

[Robaroni]

I hadnt realised there were so many CAD packages.
A lot of packages chasing a very few specialist hobby or business users.

With all the free stuff not much reason to buy unless you are doing very specialist stuff.

I buy because there's better support. I've been with Labcenter for over ten years now. They know me and it looks like they will be around. The investment in learning high end EDA is to important to me to waste on free stuff. I don't think you can get the service I get with free software and if it shuts down, for whatever reason, you're stuck with all the time it took to learn it. That's happened to me more than once. I do professional work, I can't tinker around with free stuff and I'm not in the EDA program design business. If there are bugs then people figure, hey it's free. Labcenter has been very good with bugs over the time I've owned it, not that high end guarantees that but if you find it in a program then I say stick with it if your time is worth something to you.

Time is life, what you do with your time you do with your life!

[Just_another_Dave]

In case same one is interested in open source alternatives to ANSYS HFSS (I haven’t tried them yet):
gprMax: https://www.gprmax.com/
openEMS: http://openems.de/start/index.php[/li][/list]

Open source simulink alternatives:
OpenModelica: https://www.openmodelica.org/
Scilab/Xcos: https://www.scilab.org/

Additionally, I miss fasthenry parasitic inductance and capacitance extractors: https://www.fastfieldsolvers.com/fasthenry2.htm

And an open source spice alternative for simulating huge circuits: https://xyce.sandia.gov/

Finally, some open source ANSYS Maxwell alternatives for simulating transformers and magnetic components:
MaxFEM: https://www.usc.gal/en/proxectos/maxfem/description.html
Calculix: http://www.calculix.de/
Elmer: http://www.elmerfem.org/blog/
Femm (2d): https://www.femm.info/wiki/HomePage
Freefem: https://freefem.org/
Vampire (atomistic): https://vampire.york.ac.uk/

[Inflex]

Can we add FlexBV as a commercial boardviewer/diagnostics tool?  https://pldaniels.com/flexbv  ( it's a commercial fork & development of OpenBoardview )

[Munyua44]

there are so many EDA software available in the market but the best way to go when it comes to design for commercial purposes, you need to be aware of the customer preference software. those are the only software you should concentrate on. I believe you already know each fab house and what they prefer.
thank you!