Have you purchased a PCB tool only for hobby/non-commercial use - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: jancumps
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 09:12:26 am
content: How many of us purchased a PCB tool specific for hobby/non-commercial use?Let's count hands.Yes if you paid money.No if you never paid money.Do not apply if you use the software for professional use

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 09:40:31 am
content: Newp.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 09:50:54 am
content: So far I'm still happy with the free non profit license of Diptrace 2 layers 500 pins, thanks to Diptrace.Before Diptrace, tried to use & learned hard Eagle for few weeks and simply gave up, maybe its just me, cause I think the interface & gui is way too unintuitive.

author: Balaur
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 10:02:50 am
content: I would purchase the Eagle Hobbyist version if the price gets better!

author: mcinque
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 10:14:59 am
content: Yes. An "Mega" UV lamp exposer.--Inviato da iPhone

author: komet
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 10:23:13 am
content: I must have spent $100s of my pocket money on rub-down transfers and tapes.

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 10:32:06 am
content: pretty sure he's talking about EDAs only.

author: mcinque
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 10:51:24 am
content: Quote from: Fsck on September 27, 2013, 10:32:06 amdoh

author: Alana
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 11:07:16 am
content: No. And as not-buisness entity i see it pointles until [if ever] i become buisness entity.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 11:15:17 am
content: yes: BAE light (Linux version)no: Eagle light (Linux version)but: would buy Eagle Hobbyist if Eagle gets the essential features I expect from a professional PCB tool

author: JoannaK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 11:28:40 am
content: Nope. none of them seems to work even half decently on manual routing. And by half decent I'd expect something like 15 years back commericial ones.Otoh, I have not seen pricing (or demo) of Cadstar yet.. their Free and Lite+ packages may be what I'd might like to use.

author: tehmeme
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 11:38:30 am
content: no on software toolsyes on hardware tools

author: jancumps
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 12:54:12 pm
content: Quote from: Balaur on September 27, 2013, 10:02:50 ambut have you paid for a tool?

author: JackOfVA
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 01:02:30 pm
content: Yes, back in the days of DOS, I bought a couple of inexpensive PCB layout tools.Then after I started my post-retirement ham radio kit business, I bought a rather expensive simulation and PCB layout tool, Multi-Sim. Gave up on that because it kept crashing and was far too buggy to be used.Then downloaded the free version of DIPTRACE for evaluation, really liked it and bought the 1000 pin commercial license.Also looked at Eagle and found it not to my liking at all. As I recall, Eagle ignored all the standard Windows practices and made you learn a new set of commands and menu layouts that would be usable just for Eagle.DIPTRACE - unlike Eagle - follows the normal Windows conventions and I found it easy to use and priced at reasonable levels. And, far less buggy than Multi-Sim.

author: tcleavela
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 01:26:07 pm
content: I'm currently using DipTrace (500-pin non-profit license). I could see springing for the 1000-pin commercial license someday.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 03:11:54 pm
content: Yes. I have bought an Altium licence. A couple of years ago they had a deal at 2750. I bit the bullet then. I pay annual subscription too.I only use it for hobby (we have licences at work. )You could see it as semi-work because i also use it to make boards for the books i write , but then writing books is also a hobby to me...The number of hobby things i do with it far outweighs the other usage.I even use altium to make mechanical drawings.

author: david77
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 03:26:24 pm
content: Yes. I purchased Abacom SPlan 7.0 a while ago. As far as I'm concerned a brilliant piece of software at least for my very modest needs.If anybody's interested:http://www.abacom-online.de/uk/html/splan.html

author: fvdpol
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 06:25:43 pm
content: yes, in the mid 90's I purchased a limited version (pin-count) of Ultiboard/Ulticap. Haven't used it for a while though as priorities changed.Today it's mostly tiny stuff to glue the arduino/jeenodes to sensors/io. Schematics just sketched on paper, and the circuit build ad-hoc on a piece of breadboard.Maybe at some point in time I'll need a custom pcb... not sure what to use then... had a look at Eagle and did not like it at all (but it will get the job done).

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 07:13:49 pm
content: I bought the non-profit standard license of Diptrace as my project exceeded the 500pin limit. Paid around 118€ including VAT. Very well spent money from my point of view (despite of some smaller quirks here and there).

author: SArepairman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2013, 05:59:28 am
content: what is the point of buying it, even if you use it commercially *assuming you don't have a crew of rats?*even then, seems like a hard crime to prove.what will the IRS man audit you to see if you have a licensed altium?everything in this whole profession is expensive as hell, seems like a wise man would steal all he can steal...... especially if he wants to do RF.

author: tnt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2013, 07:14:15 am
content: I paid for an eagle pro update.I had a pro license from back in the days that was bought for commercial work. And I paid the latest update even though I don't have any commercial use for it.

author: JTR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2013, 03:15:17 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on September 27, 2013, 09:50:54 amthis++

author: bugfix
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 07, 2013, 07:27:16 am
content: Yes, I bought a Eagle Hobbyist license.

author: MinK
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2013, 03:26:01 pm
content: No, using Eagle Free editionHope Altium will offer free version for makers

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2013, 07:30:04 pm
content: Yes Eagle hobby version. I love companies that offer their products for hobbieists for a fair and affordable amount of money. I wish the micro controller compiler firms would dothis and not a time limited version since then if you have to update or bugfix in the future you,re screwed.

author: Janaha
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 07, 2013, 08:08:15 pm
content: Hy.No, i haven't purchaed a PCB tool for my hobby.All i have seen till now are realy crippled versions of the professional versions at prices my port de monai dosen't like. Like those licenses where you only could use a couple off pins (like only 200 to 500pins or so), or you are limited by the usable PCB space (smaler than my faforite 160*100cm euro format). Only one or two sided, missing autorouter etc etc.So i searched the internet and found those lovely tool named KiCad. It dosen't cost a cent and by now i made all my PCB designes with it. At the begining i used it only to make single sided pcb's that i also self etched. My last PCB's are mostly double sided, exported to Gerber and made for me on the other "end" of the world for a realy small price. :-)Till now my greates hobby designed Board is a 20*20cm double sided PCB with 951 pads. It's a simple Computer made with a Atmega644p Microcontroller as it's main processor. Atachable to a TV by a SCART Connector and programmable in a simple and easy to use basic dialect. The Design is based on the work from Jörg Wolfram who invented the AVR-Chipbasic2 one- chip solution. The original can be found herehttp://www.jcwolfram.de/projekte/avr/chipbasic2/main.php( only german text, sorry :-( ) I uploaded a pic of my version, so you can see the havy modded version of it.Greetings Janaha

author: railman
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2013, 09:46:46 pm
content: Yes, I to bought a Eagle Hobbyist license. I found it to be fair and affordable. I started out using Eagle, and I've tried Diptrace and Kicad but keep going back to Eagle.

author: zorder
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 08, 2013, 09:11:06 pm
content: I used to work with the free version of Eagle, but the pcb size limit is very restrictive. I moved to Kicad and I'm very happy with it, although there are a bunch of things that need to be improved.

author: tized
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 11:07:03 am
content: Tried Eagle about three years ago and was very disappointed with the workflow. Discovered KiCad and have been using it ever since.

author: delmadord
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2013, 05:28:15 pm
content: I was using Eagle, but had some problems wit it, don't remember the details, unfortunately. Then I tried KiCAD in the Open Source spirit, but I hated the multi-step process of annotation (I believe it is the name for that). Now I am using free version of Diptrace. But I am still not sure if will I buy some tool, when the DIptrace pin limit kicks in. So far it is good.

author: LaurenceW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2013, 10:19:42 pm
content: Am I the only person here to have bought EasyPC from Number One systems in the UK?http://www.numberone.com/I bought the 1000 pin version a while back, and upgrade to the latest release (one comes out every year!) about every 2-3 years for around USD $100 a time. I use it for hobby use, selling a few of the end products that result.I think Farnell/Element14 may be offering some sort of cut-down free version of EasyPC? Not sure of the details.I really like EasyPC (up to around V17, now). It does everything (and more) thatIwant in a PCB CAD package. I've never really tried anything else, so cannot compare. Like most people at the hobby level, having made the time and/or money investment in one package, I tend to stick with it!And what's wrong with WordStar, anyway?(yes, I really am that old)

author: jancumps
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2013, 10:27:55 pm
content: We've been at approximately 25% since vote #4.

author: Greyersting
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2013, 10:39:40 pm
content: All I had to do was buy the boards, I had everything else I needed at home.

author: Maxlor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2013, 11:04:01 pm
content: I've been using Eagle so far. It's a reasonably unified tool and works well on Linux, so there you go. So far my skills have been well below what I can do with the free version. Once I'll surpass that, I'll probably get the hobbyist version without much hesitation. I'd probably have bought that already if their licenses carried over to the next major version, but 5.x licenses don't work for 6.x, bummer.At work, we use both Altium and Eagle, actually. Altium is used for the high-end stuff by the guys who know how to do high-end stuff, and Eagle is used by us software guys who just need some microcontrollers to glue things together. I do see that Altium is orders of magnitude better than Eagle. But let me tell you this: one app is not enough to make me use Windows instead of some Unix-like OS. I hear the Altium guys are cooking up a hobbyist version, let's hope they at least get i working under wine, if not under *nix proper. Otherwise I'll just stick with Eagle. Might cause me a bit more work with the hardware parts, but having *nix will make it up for the software aspects.

author: Garywoo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2013, 03:49:23 am
content: Not personally but i have huge respect for the folks that do, and if i did it as more than a hobby i would too.

author: bdivi
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2013, 12:49:06 pm
content: Eagle free - works for small projects.Used to use Orcad/PSpice in the past but this was too much for DIY.

author: Chris56000
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2023, 12:24:33 pm
content: Hi !QuoteHear, Hear!My copy is part–bought/part donated – I was given the old V15 Easy–PC Licence by the design engineer that formerly used it when one of my previous employers closed the Electronics Department there, and on explaining to Number One how I came in possession of it they agreed to allow me to keep the licence and buy future versions at the upgrade price!I have made two replacement boards for Vintage Colour TVs with it as well as six designs for my friend at home, and more designs for me are in the pipeline!There is a free version of "Easy–PC", by RS called Design Spark, now on Version 10, part crippled compared with "Easy–PC", (no usable auto–router or 'Reverse Engineering" tool for example), but I think it is still unrestricted for board size, pin and layer count!I also bought sPlan 8.0 for my circuit–diagram work and nothing beats it for speed and versatility – if I want a diagram like a Philips G11 with pretty coloured circuit blocks and pastel tints I can make one easily !I also bought Sprint Layout 6.0 for magazine PCBs where only artwork is available as the artwork can be traced over, and any mistakes made in the magazine artwork can be corrected at the layout stage!I also bought "Circuit Wizard Professional" by New Wave Concepts but it seems they've now added some enormously expensive add–on to it you have to buy as they've crippled what was previously a full version!Chris Williams

author: alm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2023, 06:27:09 pm
content: It's been 10 years after the last post. I think many people will have switched to something else in the past decade...

author: Gary350z
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2023, 06:43:39 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on September 27, 2013, 09:50:54 amThis exactly, both statements.

author: scopeman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2024, 02:32:21 am
content: Well as some may know yours truly has used just about every PCB CAD program on the planet at one time or another starting with the DOS Wintek smARTWORK.However the ones that I used the most early on was Tango PCB Series II DOS that I paid for and was one of the beta testers for. I used that for probably 2 decades until I could not get it to work anymore in high resolution display mode (or work at all) on modern operating systems.I never really ever used the router package even though I had it.So I went looking and found Abacom's SprintLayout V5.0 and later upgraded to V6.0.I probably have done several hundred, maybe a thousand boards of various complexity with it. It was the easiest to learn most bug free PCB software I have ever used.I have used it for professional and hobby type use buying a separate copy for work use. It's not hard to justify 49.9 euro (19% less than that if you are not in the EU) for a copy. I use OrCAD 9.2 for schematics as I bought an upgrade years ago from the DOS OrCAD back in the early 90's. I also bought a version of sPlan from Abacom and additionally their FrontDesigner3.0.As a side note we did buy two seats of Altium but I turned my intern loose on that program as the learning curve was way too steep for what I needed to do in the timeI had to do it.They aren't fancy but very usable software that is a great bang for the buck and has never disappointed me. Highly recommended.SamW3OHM