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 A Guide to online information about: Printed
Circuit Board
Cadence Design Systems Inc. and OrCAD Inc. have announced an agreement under which Cadence will acquire OrCAD. If you're into serious analog design or building your own ICs, this would be the package for you. The only price I could find was $9,995 for the Allegro Studio. The Allegro FREE viewer lets
you view and plot Allegro PCB, SPECCTRAQuest, and IC Package Design
databases. This version of the viewer is free! Throughout placement
and routing, various interested parties can use the viewer to review
the design. The latest release of SPECCTRA can be downloaded,
but I don't know if this is useful by itself.
The CADint demo allows use of all CADint features to design boards with up to 250 pins, using manual routing only. The demonstration requires Windows 95/98 or Windows NT to install. Manuals can be downloaded, and it has Crosstalk and EMC Support. Price ranges from $1495 to $3995.
Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor: The program consists of three main modules, layout editor, schematic editor, and autorouter. Available for Windows 95/NT4, DOS, and Linux. Price ranges from $49 to $399.
The EAGLE 3.5 Light Edition can be used for free. The following limitations apply to the EAGLE Light Edition in general: The usable board area is limited to 100 x 80 mm (4 x 3.2 inches). Only two signal layers can be used (top and bottom). The schematic editor can only create one sheet.
http://www.redac.co.uk/cadstar/index.html
For Windows 95/98/NT, from 3,500 EUROs. The CADStar family comprises a suite of CAD tools for PCB design. Schematic capture, advanced automatic placement, operator-controlled grid-free auto-interactive routers, and post-processors for manufacturing are fully complemented by a variety of third-party software, ranging from analog simulation, thermal layout, simulation to manufacturing, artworks generation and personal or work group productivity tools. A demo can be downloaded but
you cannot print or save.
Originally written entirely in Assembler Language by Hardware Design Engineers (not utility programmers), CIRCAD boasts the highest run-time performance of any PCB CAD package on the market today. It has schematics, netlists, circuit boards, and Gerber plots. CIRCAD'98 is for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. Product price for CIRCAD'98 is $995, and the price for DOS CIRCAD is $695. They have site license packages as well as student discounts. The original DOS version would run on a ’286. CIRCAD has some thing called pixel processing for scanned images, which I haven't seen in any other packages. They claim you can start with a scanned image of a PCB and work backwards to the schematic. Over the years I've downloaded the various demos of CIRCAD and played with it, and it always seemed like the one I'd buy if I had a $1,000 to spend personally. In earlier demos there was an autorouter, which the current product no longer seems to have, though broken remnants of it can still be found in the help file of the demo (4.07N). A mailing list can be found by searching for "CIRCAD" at www.onelist.com. The current demo has several
items that do not function when you go to use them as incentive to
buy the product. The CircuitMaker Pro demo is fully functional, allowing you to do everything except save. This means you can build, simulate, test and print circuits to see how easy the product is to learn and use. The demo is 45-day time locked, so after 45 days the ability to simulate and print new circuits is disabled (although you can still simulate and print any of the 70 example circuits after the demo expires). The TraxMaker Pro demo is also fully functional, with the exception of the print, save, and Gerber file export features (although you can print and output Gerber files for the example boards included in the demo). Prices range from $299 to $1398. The software is available now, and runs on the Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and NT platforms. There is a student version that has the same basic features as the current CircuitMaker, but is restricted to a maximum of 50 parts per design and a library of only 1,000 models. Other limitations of the student version include PCB netlist output, which is restricted to TraxMaker format only, and the creation of new devices. In 1995 MicroCode purchased the DOS-based Autotrax from Protel International. They expanded and enhanced this PCB layout and autorouting program and converted it to the Windows platform. Now sold as TraxMaker, the program provides a perfect compliment to CircuitMaker. In 1998 MicroCode merged with
Protel International, with whom it shared a common interest in taking
advanced technologies and making them easy to use. A CircuitMaker
customer service center was established in Provo, Utah in early 1999.
The Douglas Professional System includes three main programs:
Something none of the other PCB people cover is sheet metal fabrication for chassis, card cages, and front panels. Customers can use the layout programs (including layout freeware) to design sheet metal parts for card cages, chassis, boxes, front panels, and simple mechanical parts such as levers and latches. Pricing didn't seem to be available unless you filled out a form to place a order, I can't say I really understood what was going on with this. It runs on the Apple Macintosh.
If
you would like to add any information on this topic or request a
Circuit Cellar
provides up to date information for engineers, www.circuitcellar.com
for more information and additional articles.
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