What schematic/pcb layout program?

[sentry7]

Hey guys,

So this morning, I woke up fully focused on getting my latest prototype to board. Everything is good and ready to go.

I was willing to shell out some cash, moving from my free (and horrible) pcb layout software to something more legit, so I though "What about Cadsoft's Eagle? It's the industry standard!"

I go to pay for the license just to find out that Autodesk has acquired Eagle, and a lot of people aren't happy about it.

As an enthusiast who takes electronics a little more seriously with a bunch designs, should I go with Eagle? Why would it be bad for some people?

[krho]

KiCAD. However if you decide to shell some money to autocad, then please be careful. The basic license doesn't cover commercial projects!

[Kremmen]

There is a promotion or something going with Altium Circuit Studio. Along with many other forumists i took the offer. (See a relevant thread in the EDA/CAD section https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/).
Also, i am a long time happy user of Diptrace, you might want to take a look at that one as well. Many consider it very intuitive to use and i agree. There are several licensing levels from a free crippleware to the full package. www.diptrace.com

[Siwastaja]

Cadsoft's Eagle? It's the industry standard!"

By which industry?

It was never very popular among professional designers, or electronic industry, although some small and mid size companies did use it - still, quite niche, very far from being called industry standard.

At some point of time, maybe between 2005 and about 2012, it was quite universally touted as some kind of "hobbyist" friendly, later "open source hardware" friendly package. This never made much sense to me, and the fad did fade away somewhat.

It seems that many people have actually forgotten Eagle already, and the discontinuation of sane licensing was just the last nail in the coffin. I think the CircuitMaker did have quite some impact on this; also the KiCad fad.

To answer the question: they are all horrible, there simply is no silver bullet, you need to try out several to find one that irritates you least and gets the job done for you. It depends a lot on your personality.

[tautech]

Select from this list:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/pcbeda-software-list/

[Nusa]

That list is awesome. My advice would still be to at least try Kicad.

The purchase and license prices are right (free with no restricted or ransomware features), open-source, great documentation, plenty of tutorials to get you started, and enough community support to answer random how-to questions. Of course there's a learning curve, but once you've mastered using keyboard shortcuts for common operations, it's a lot faster to use. In the last few years it's acquired a level of polish that puts it on par with the better commercial packages.