[quote author="arhi"]Had no clue DesignSpark and PCB Artist are same company :D ... nor that Pulsonix can open those projects ... that's nice..[/quote] Yes, the people behind DesignSpark make custom versions of EasYPC for a number of PCB manufacturing houses. They also make the high end Pulsonix PCB software as well.
[quote author="arhi"]WOW, weird that PCB Artist don't produce gerber's, that makes it fairly unusable...[/quote] They do this to tie you to that particular PCB manufacturer. Which is a shame.
[quote author="hak8or"]Aw, I thought the title meant that you got your own board and ic's, and now have it in the oven to solder everything. :( [/quote] No, I wish :-)
But like all delicious pi's (or pies) they need to be cooked for just the right length of time, but I wished this one would hurry up coz I'm starving :-)
True, its activation via the internet can be a problem. I've got it installed on two different PC's now using the same user account but different activations codes. Its a decent PCB program I would recommend to anyone.
Its propriety software not open source but free to use without any size or commercial limitations. RS Components are behind it, promoting it as an alternative to Eagle CAD now that Farnell Components own Cadsoft.
I've been using it for over a year now and find it easy to use. Plus you can import Eagle CAD designs and libraries which is useful.
[quote author="tayken"]The problem is that free version of Eagle does not allow 4 layers. Maybe some other CAD tool will allow it and we can use that for some "special" 4 layer designs.[/quote] DesignSpark PCB will do multilayer boards and you can import Eagle CAD files
[quote author="arhi"]I tried few days ago to load eagle schematic and eagle board into it without success. They advertise they can import eagle but I didn't manage to do that :([/quote] Its a bit clunky as it's a two stage process, involving an intermediate design file.
First, in EagleCAD you need to open your design (PCB or schematic) and run then ULP translation script (PCBToIntermediate.ulp or SchematicToIntermediate.ulp) provide by DesignSpark.
Once the design is converted to an intermediate format, start DesignSpark and open the intermediate design. It you can now save it as a DesignSpark PCB design. You can do the same for EagleCAD libraries.
[quote author="arhi"]... Note that apart from Eagle there is number of other free commercial eda tools available, many without limitations of the free Eagle version, some surprisingly good (for e.g. design spark is surprisingly good free eda tool with a single flaw and that's "winblows only" .. it actually imports Eagle files, I forgot about it, so there is actually a way to read your eagle files if eagle is gone :D !!! designspark v3 also have a simulation interface so it should be able to talk to spice and other free simulation tools - I have not tried that but .... the gui is 10 times faster and more ergonomic then eagle, it looks better, it is faster .. worth a try .. if you compare it side by side with Eagle, Eagle will lose by a lot)
check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_EDA_software[/quote] I've been using DesignSpark PCB for over a year now and found it to be a very usable package. I found the size limitation (100 x 80mm) in (free) EagleCAD a problem for my bigger designs and swapped to DesignSpark. I've not tried the new simulator interface yet.
[quote author="octal"][quote author="TonyD"]more cheap dev. boards with cad design files. A deal every week on www.tideals.com/ would be cool as well :)[/quote]
With dev boards at $4 and $10 ... what do you expect? do you want the to pay you for using them :p[/quote] I'm interested cheaper application Evaluation Modules. There is a massive price difference between say a board for the MSP430 and a motor controller EVM with micro/DSP and motor drive circuitry.
The specs for the Raspberry Pi are impressive for $25
* credit-card-sized * Broadcom BCM2835 application processor * Ethernet interface using LAN9512 at the $35 price point * 128MB of RAM at the $25 price point * 256MB of RAM at the $35 price point
The first alpha PCB’s are back and they have successfully managed to get Linux working on them, with their latest blog entries showing the boards running a port of Quake 3.
With shipping quoted for the end of 2011, I know what I want for Christmas this year
I don't know if this is happening to others, but the forums keep automatically logging me out on a regular basis. A typical example is: I log in, hit the "view new posts" button, then find I've been logged out, so I log-in again and it happens again :(
