For a New PCB Software in Development

[IntegratedValve]

What would you like to see in a Schematic/PCB design software that you miss in other industry standards, in terms of usability, control, and features?

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

[Bloch]

I would like to see a 1 to 1 copy of Protel 99. I would pay 99  to 299$.


Then can you deliver ?

[IntegratedValve]

I would like to see a 1 to 1 copy of Protel 99. I would pay 99  to 299$.

And what does Protel 99 do? I think I asked for features not what to clone.

Then can you deliver ?

Deliver what pizza? No, I'm not Smokey.

[AndyC_772]

Really slick, accurate, reliable import and export of other tools' schematics, boards and library files.

The single most important feature to me in any such package is the ability to exchange files with my customers and design bureau. Without this ability, any other tool is as useless as a word processor that can't load or save MS Word documents or even plain text files.

[IntegratedValve]

Really slick, accurate, reliable import and export of other tools' schematics, boards and library files.

The single most important feature to me in any such package is the ability to exchange files with my customers and design bureau. Without this ability, any other tool is as useless as a word processor that can't load or save MS Word documents or even plain text files.

What about MS Word if it cannot export or load other formats, do we still use it? I see this export/import feature as a later add-on. But anyway I'm not sure if other format specifications are open...

[daedalus]

any chance you could elaborate on your development plans? are you aiming at the hobbyist / low end commercial part of the market? how big is your dev team? how many man-years are you planning to throw at this? Such questions would somewhat scope the kinds of features we should be suggesting.

[David_AVD]

Is this something you (and/or a development team) are thinking of creating?

Why would you want compatibility with MS Word?

[quantumvolt]

Really slick, accurate, reliable import and export of other tools' schematics, boards and library files.

The single most important feature to me in any such package is the ability to exchange files with my customers and design bureau. Without this ability, any other tool is as useless as a word processor that can't load or save MS Word documents or even plain text files.

What about MS Word if it cannot export or load other formats, do we still use it? I see this export/import feature as a later add-on. But anyway I'm not sure if other format specifications are open...

No. We do not use it. Garbage bin next. The world is full of add-on's that either never materialize or are used to suck dollars with infinite greed when the original product is established. F#$% Microsoft and GPIB adapters and everything else that do not read and write to (almost) everything else (almost) free. Good luck - seriously and politely. Imo - with your 'later' attitude you surely will need it 

[daedalus]

if it cant import my current EDA libraries and designs, I wouldn't even bother trying it out, what would be the point (have been burnt learning tools that turned out to be crap far too many times, and ending up redoing work). If it cant export as eagle or better altium projects, then its useless for freelance work, as almost all clients want project files in one of those.

I use word because it is the tool with the biggest market share, and its formats are a de-facto standard. You have exactly 0% market share right now (having not released), so you don't get the same latitude. But to take your example further, even Word will read/write half a dozen non-word formats.

[IntegratedValve]

Me and the team are seriously considering a new PCB software that reach all levels including "high-end professional market."

How much time before a release, this all depends on how things go as this is a project we do in our spare time. We have well designed code base and tons of code from other projects than we can use, so I can talk about 6 months to release a working demo.

As I mentioned, export/import capabilities depend on whether the target format is open or closed, then we can do nothing about it. We are not hackers ;-)

Experimenting with some of PCB tools out there, I'm not really impressed by the usability, which will be main focus. The software is based on extensible architecture which allows add-on's.

BTW I know MS Word is the "standard" but it's ridiculously expensive, that's why I use OpenOffice ;-)

[David_AVD]

Seems I misunderstood your reference to MS Word.  I thought you wanted the PCB program to be compatible with it !

There's plenty of opinion here on EEVblog about what people really need from a schematic / PCB program.

[AndyC_772]

What about MS Word if it cannot export or load other formats, do we still use it? I see this export/import feature as a later add-on. But anyway I'm not sure if other format specifications are open...

I chose Word as my example because its file formats are the de-facto standard. My customers email me all kinds of documents in .DOC (or, more recently, .DOCX) format, and I absolutely have to be able to open, edit and re-save them, and produce documents myself in the same formats to send back.

I don't actually use Word itself, but that doesn't matter because the software I do use (LibreOffice) does a good enough job of importing and exporting other formats. Sometimes I can get away with producing a PDF, but more often than not I need to provide an editable file which preserves changes and history. Although LibreOffice is a bit behind the curve in terms of format support, its developers do seem to fully understand and appreciate how important this feature is, and I know that a lot of work goes into it.

Exactly the same applies to my schematics and PCBs. A few of my customers just want a job done and some PCBs delivered, so I could use any tool that can export Gerbers - but others want, use and require Orcad for schematics and Allegro for PCBs. That means I *must* be able to load and save .DSN and .BRD files, whatever software I happen to use. I'm sure other designers would equally appreciate the ability to swap files with customers using PADS, or Cadstar, or Altium.

If I were buying software for purely in-house use then I'd have greater freedom to choose a package based on its own merits - and I can certainly think of some features which would save me time and make life easier compared to the Cadence stuff I use. But first and foremost, I need to be able to exchange design files with my customers, and the import/export process has to be seamless and reliable. The wider the range of 'alien' formats supported the better, as this increases the number of customers whose data I can work with.

[EEVblog]

Me and the team are seriously considering a new PCB software that reach all levels including "high-end professional market."

The high end professional market? Really?
Do you know what that really entails? Take Altium for example. They have been making PCB CAD software for 30 years, have a market cap of hundreds of millions of dollars, and hundreds of employees (far far less coders of course!), and they have yet to really be able to hit the "high-end professional market". They are more the mid level pro market.

How much time before a release, this all depends on how things go as this is a project we do in our spare time. We have well designed code base and tons of code from other projects than we can use, so I can talk about 6 months to release a working demo.

Rather than reinvent the wheel and fragment the market even more, have you considered simply contributing to the KiCAD project and save yourself at least 12 month right there?

[IntegratedValve]

The high end professional market? Really?
Do you know what that really entails? Take Altium for example. They have been making PCB CAD software for 30 years, have a market cap of hundreds of millions of dollars, and hundreds of employees (far far less coders of course!), and they have yet to really be able to hit the "high-end professional market". They are more the mid level pro market.

And who's the high-end pro market? OrCad? Their GUI sucks.

Rather than reinvent the wheel and fragment the market even more, have you considered simply contributing to the KiCAD project and save yourself at least 12 month right there?

It's not really reinventing the wheel, it's making a better wheel, or introducing a new competitor. Otherwise why Rigol and others reinventing the wheel then?

[free_electron]

Realtime drc and lvs.
Realtime crossprobing between schematic and pcb
Multimonitor support
Interactive router with brains.

[IntegratedValve]

Realtime drc and lvs.
Realtime crossprobing between schematic and pcb
Multimonitor support
Interactive router with brains.

Are you sure this should run on a PC? Dude, you've got no clue about programming.

[Monkeh]

Realtime drc and lvs.
Realtime crossprobing between schematic and pcb
Multimonitor support
Interactive router with brains.

Are you sure this should run on a PC? Dude, you've got no clue about programming.

What a fantastic way to respond to one of the most experienced members of this forum.

[AndyC_772]

Are you sure this should run on a PC? Dude, you've got no clue about programming.

Please, go and use a real high-end PCB tool for a while and report back. The features free_electron has asked for are among the bare minimum of features I'd be looking for, given that they already exist in affordable, entry-level 'professional' PCB software.

[c4757p]

Realtime drc and lvs.
Realtime crossprobing between schematic and pcb
Multimonitor support
Interactive router with brains.

Are you sure this should run on a PC? Dude, you've got no clue about programming.

1, 2, 3 are easy for anybody with an ounce of coding ability. 4 is challenging but has obviously been done before.

Time to move past Hello World, dude.

[DutchGert]

The high end professional market? Really?
Do you know what that really entails? Take Altium for example. They have been making PCB CAD software for 30 years, have a market cap of hundreds of millions of dollars, and hundreds of employees (far far less coders of course!), and they have yet to really be able to hit the "high-end professional market". They are more the mid level pro market.

And who's the high-end pro market? OrCad? Their GUI sucks.

Rather than reinvent the wheel and fragment the market even more, have you considered simply contributing to the KiCAD project and save yourself at least 12 month right there?

It's not really reinventing the wheel, it's making a better wheel, or introducing a new competitor. Otherwise why Rigol and others reinventing the wheel then?

Mentor, Cadence, Zuken are the real deal when it comes to pro market.

[IntegratedValve]

Realtime drc and lvs.
Realtime crossprobing between schematic and pcb
Multimonitor support
Interactive router with brains.

Are you sure this should run on a PC? Dude, you've got no clue about programming.

1, 2, 3 are easy for anybody with an ounce of coding ability. 4 is challenging but has obviously been done before.

Time to move past Hello World, dude.

Hello??? Then why list them if they are so easy and done before???

[Monkeh]

So who exactly are you and your team, and how many years of experience do you have with writing software for professional use?

[free_electron]

Hello??? Then why list them if they are so easy and done before???

Because Altium can do all 4 without problems. Anything that doesn't surpass Altium in its PCB / schematics capabilities is TOTAL AND UTTER CRAP
If you are going to design a kick-ass SCH/PCB tool : there is your gold reference. Make sure it can do all those things and then improve it.

Those 4 things are the BARE minimum. If you can't meet all 4 don't even begin writing code... as you have no clue about the problems involved in designing a PCB.

This is the huge problem to be solved and the big mistake made by people that work in tools like KiCad and gEda ans all those other mediocre tools. They have NO CLUE what are the problems faced in designing , i am stressing DESIGNING , drawing lines to make interconnects is only a VERY SMALL aspect of the actual DESIGN process , a PCB. They may be super duper programmers but have never gone through the pain of having to do proper layout work on a PCB with a half finished schematic, pinswaps, partswaps, footprint swaps, part insertion and deletion mid design. They don;t understand how tedious things get. how a lot of things are done post-layou like injecting ESD and EMC control structures which may requires shuffling traces. How a plane can look post-routing like it has been pummeled by several rounds of a shotgun using coarse grains. That plane will need reconstruction which will involve Via shuffling.

And those are the areas where REALTIME DRV and LVS and crossprobing and having an interactive router are MANDATORY.

If you think all that is needed is a to kludge together a vector drawing program with some layers. -FAIL-

Besides. What would you run them on ? Workstation ? those have gone the way of the wind. long time a go. An avarage PC beats  workstation.

Talk about having no clue...

As for my programming skills. They may be mediocre compared to those of professional programmers but i have written boot code that sits in almost any ADSL modem in the world. And i have code that sits in hard disks as well. And that is code that sits in ROM and can't be altered... not that stupid stuff where 'if its got a bug we'll upload a patch. There is no such thing as 'patching' that code. So i think i do pretty well in that domain.

[Fsck]

Realtime drc and lvs.
Realtime crossprobing between schematic and pcb
Multimonitor support
Interactive router with brains.

Are you sure this should run on a PC? Dude, you've got no clue about programming.

1, 2, 3 are easy for anybody with an ounce of coding ability. 4 is challenging but has obviously been done before.

Time to move past Hello World, dude.

Hello??? Then why list them if they are so easy and done before???

he gave you a minimum. add your own structure on top of the foundation.

[c4757p]

Hello??? Then why list them if they are so easy and done before???

They are easy. But doing hundreds of easy things is not easy, so things people don't perceive as important get skipped. Many cheap and/or shitty PCB packages skip them.