Need help with the worst software ever.

[progbuddy]

I saw the PCB tutorial in the tutorials section, and I thought I would try just making some circuit board designs in FreePCB. Well, I have no clue where to start, as it has nothing that says "Hey, click me!" or remotely looks like it could be useful. I saw "add area" at the bottom, and thought heyyyy, that might work. I guess I could "add area" so i could actually ya know, start a design, as there was no clearly defined box that I could start in, as is the norm when creating a PCB of a specific size. Wrong. Anyone know how to use this? I dont feel like reading the attached 180-page PDF file on how to use it. </rant>

[Collinstheclown]

I think I've used that in the past. I use eagle now. There is no way to set the board dims as far as I remember. What I did was set it to snap to a grid and made the grid the length I needed, then did the same for height.

I thought that program was super easy to use actually, but it doesn't output any files for board houses so I ditched it.




-CollinstheClown

[Oneslowz28]

Download Eagle http://www.cadsoft.de/ and never look back. There are 100s of tutorials on youtube and the parts library has hundreds of thousands of parts. I have been using it for over a year now and recommend it to everyone wanting to make their own pcb's. The free version does limit the board size to 4"x4" IIRC but I have managed to pack a lot of stuff on that area. I do use SMD resistors, caps, and IC's though. Sparkfun has some awesome hand soldering smd components tutorial and some eagle tutorials too.

Edit. The single one thing I love about eagle is its auto routing tool. This makes routing traces so darn easy that it boarders on funny.