Schematic/PCB Design for Linux?

VanessaDannenberg asks: "Occasionally, I have been known to design the occasional circuit board. I've been using Eagle, but with the board size limit of 3x4 inches in the free version, and a $400 price tag to exceed this limit, it is time to consider a Free Open Source Software alternative. Not being a Linux programmer myself, I have checked into and ruled out gEDA, KiCAD, Electric, XCircuit, and a host of others as being too incomplete to replace Eagle. My requirements are pretty basic: Draw a schematic, make a board out of it, edit and autoroute it, export to Gerber, and do it all natively within Linux. So, with this in mind, what suggestions do you folks have?"

Good luck!

[harrkev]

I do not know of anything like what you ask. AFAIK, gEAD is the best thing out there.

Unfortunately, this is a bit of a niche application.

KiCAD looks good

[Anonymous Coward]

KiCAD Check it out.

http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/ [lis.inpg.fr]

It's probably not for a hobby

[technoextreme]

Reading Eagle's website I realized that they actualy offer a cheaper (Read $125.00) version for people who are using Eaglecad for non-profit purposes.

Re:KiCAD looks good

[Kirmeo]

no damn it, the poster is a linux guy mod it down because its windows shite.

From the install.txt:

Kicad binaries exists for Linux and Windows (XP, 2000) Files (schematic, boards, libraries) created on both systems are totally compatibles.

PCSB/Schematic CAD for Linux

[goodie3shoes]

I think the simple answer is that there is no package available that meets the poster's needs. Those that are available at no cost (FOSS) don't have the ease of use and power that's requested. Eagle seems to be the only thing close to the price range. I haven't used it; I have used "pcb" with success. Its interface is a little funky, but not counter-intuitive. And it is under active development, with a user group list that sends me 20+ emails a day. In particular the requirement for autorouting presents a high barrier. It's a high-end feature, but not really necessary for simple boards. A human being will almost always come up with a better layout than a machine, and for analog boards, autorouting is useless, because the design rules cannot be taught to the machine. If, as some have surmised, the person who originated the inquiry is a woman, the sometimes harsh and dismissive tone of some posts on this topic leaves me no doubt as to why there seem to be so few women involved with Linux. My thanks to those who have posted helpful suggestions.

Re:$400? Get real

[rco3]

I've used Protel and Eagle on the same basic design, and found that Eagle's autorouter is both faster and less crappy than Protel's - especially the first few updates of Protel DXP, which had an awful autorouter. Protel kept leaving loops, routing all the way around the world to get next door, and took forever to do it. I wouldn't use autoplacing for anything important, so I'm not really concerned about that "lack".

Basically, I have to cordially disagree completely with your assessment of Eagle. It isn't the best interface in the world, but the number of bugs and the performance are far better in my experience than you've described. I intentionally and preferably use it over Protel all the time.

I guess that's why they call them opinions.

Re:Software isn't the only open entity

[VanessaDannenberg]

Don't be so pessimistic. Some people give back to the community in forms other than cash and software. Maybe if [she] designs something useful, [she'll] share it with the world. Commercial tools present a high barrier for entry to the hobbyist, which discourages open source hardware.

And this is precisely why I asked about an open source replacement. It's one thing to pay for a product if you're going to use it to make money. It's a far different thing to expect to pay the same money for a product only to use it for hobby work.

I design gadgets for the Commodore 64/128, and a quick estimate shows that at the prices I've seen around the web in the last few days, I would spend more on the software alone than I would spend on making one production-ready unit of every board I've designed since I started fiddling with this stuff (that's only about 10 unique designs), and if I tried to sell, there's no way I'd ever break even. Several years ago there was a slim chance, but today, forget about it. Today, all of the stuff I write or design is free and open source, and stuff I have written in the past I have since declared free also (where the source code still exists). I think that fits anyone's definition of "giving back." I must stress - I do not program for Linux, just Commodore.

Oh, and to the other gentlemen who have mentioned auto-routing and other high-end features as being too much to ask of FOSS, let me see..

• PCB [sourceforge.net], the very PCB editor I started with years ago, is a nice board editor with autorouter (which I have yet to use) and some other nice features, but that's only half of the needed setup.
• KiCAD [lis.inpg.fr] has a decent schematic editor, 3D viewer, and some other stuff, but it just has problems on my box (apparently poor integration, very slow board editor, crashy).
• gEDA [seul.org] attempts to integrate PCB with schematic capture and other tools, but it's buggy on my setup (missing config files in Ubuntu, schematic doesn't get translated over to the board properly, no component-onto-board auto-place function to go with the schematic capture)
• gschem2xpcb [freelabs.com] looks like it would fill in well to convert those gEDA/gSchem schematics over to PCB in a way similar to Eagle's autoplace feature, but this is just a stand-alone command-line program with only the one function, and the author seems have a major aversion to the GPL. *shrug*
• The GIMP [gimp.org] of course has tons of features and a really nice UI, and in particular it has vector graphics capabilities and multiple layers, but of course it's not adapted for PCB/schematic work.
• Eagle, for this particular list, has wonderful parts libraries (for which utilities exist to convert these to other formats) and good integration between schematic and board, but it has some serious screen refresh bugs, plus the aforementioned 4x3 inch board size limit.

Along with these, every other open source program I've looked into has at least one of the features I need. I was just hoping for a program that combines all of these already-existing, already written features into one Eagle-killing FOSS program.

MUCS-PCB & KiCAD = FOSS PCB Heaven

[Anonymous Coward]

MUCS-PCB http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/apt/projects/tools/ mucs-pcb/ [manchester.ac.uk]
- multi-layer auto-router with Gerber Output
- input is a netlist... like the kind KiCAD's eeschema can create

problems: not for complex/high-speed designs (if u need BGA devices, matched-length traces/impedences, etc. you NEED high end tools like Altium's Protel DXP/Designer or OrCAD)

What problems did u have with KiCAD? I've done several hobbyist designs in KiCAD and it has met all my needs. It takes a while to get used to its quirky UI, but after that you can do a LOT with it.
KiCAD has a (very simple, alpha version) autorouter, Gerber 274x output, multilayer, full design flow, etc.
Also, its text-based files allow you to easily do complex editing (like changing all pad sizes for a given part) with a simple search-replace text tool (like the one found in the FOSS tool Scite http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html [scintilla.org])

Good luck.