PCB Design Software-Free/Cheep.

[joelby]

My main beef with A!tium now is that it's Delphi heritage makes is slower than it needs to be, and ties it to Windows (I prefer to develop on Unix/Linux/Mac.)

It works well enough on the Mac under Parallels, but I must say that the scroll wheel behaviour drives me nuts. The Apple Magic Mouse's scroll action (and those of track pads) is very fine and can be controlled in what seems like pixel increments, whereas the standard PC scroll mouse will scroll a couple of lines, and many mouse wheels have a 'click' to represent this. Unfortunately A!tium doesn't take this into account very well (other programs seem to), so the slightest brush on the mouse surface sends your PCB flying off the screen. The update rate is also a bit slow, so you need to wait several seconds for it to stop moving before you can centre it again. This happens at least to me at least once a minute and is in spite of me turning off autopan and changing the scroll options in Mouse Wheel Configuration to only work if modifiers are held down. Maybe I'd feel better if I printed the Mouse Wheel Configuration screen out and stamped on it?

[Zero999]

Why doesn't the forum like the word A!tium and changes the letter l to an !?

Seems weird, it can be circumvented by using empty bold tags in the middle: Altium.

[alm]

A-l-t-i-u-m (marketing web bot trap, big brother is watching) actually offer a student version of the software for very close to that price, full version, but of course not for commercial use, and you have to prove you are a student.

BTW, can all those on the forum who want to mention A-l-t-i-u-m, can you please obfuscate it like I have. There are marketing bots that troll the web and have found stuff on this forum before which I've been asked to remove.
Even tweets are showing up on the radar.
Generally not a problem, but I'd prefer to stay off the radar if I can.

Not sure if your tricking the forum software will be picked up by search engines, probably, so I don't think it's very nice to Dave, especially since he's the one providing this all. He doesn't want to involve his employer in this, imagine your employer reading all your posts to check if you said anything bad for the company?

Edit: added better quote

[joelby]

See Dave's post, eight above yours, and perhaps edit your post?

[Zero999]

Sorry, I should learn to read the whole thread before posting. I've edited my post.

[EEVblog]

Thanks for understanding guys.
You can be assured that every use of the magic word on the net turns up on the desk of the powers-that-be.
I have already been asked to remove some forum posts as a result.

Dave.

[FreeThinker]

I've never used this but it's free, DesignSpark.

http://www.designspark.com/pcb

It's RadioSpares (RS) answer to Farnells purchase of Eagle.Heard good reports but not my forte at the moment, biggest problem is component selection is by RS part number so have a copy handy

[bound]

I have just send email to Dave asking him to do some tutorial about routing a PCB's , you know some
rules for routing power plans , signal plans ... noises . Hope his next video blog will be about this ! cant wait ! Greetings from Poland guys !