Max wrote>>I found Eagle to be the best price/performance tradeoff >>in my catagory (sub $1000):>> The pricing structure of Cadsoft's EAGLE (Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor) is very good--as is the buy-only-what-you-need modularity. (I have never seen an autorouter for which I would pay the asking price.) Grant Edwards wrote:>Eagle is also one of the few choices >for somebody running Linux or OS-X. >The cross-platform thing is a nice selling point. As far as I know, the open source packages are the only others that do this (well, in varying degrees).>Even the free version is darned useful, >Yup. No FEATURES are crippled. Limits of the demo: 100mm x 80mm boards 2 copper layers Single-sheet schematics. If you want to sell what you produce with the demo, you can licence this version for $50.>and the free support on the newsgroups is first-class. >Amen.
Program for PCB/Circuit Design
Started by ●October 22, 2006
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
On 2006-10-24, JeffM <jeffm_@email.com> wrote:>>Eagle is also one of the few choices for somebody running Linux >>or OS-X. > > The cross-platform thing is a nice selling point. As far as I > know, the open source packages are the only others that do > this (well, in varying degrees). > >>Even the free version is darned useful, >> > Yup. No FEATURES are crippled. > Limits of the demo: > 100mm x 80mm boards > 2 copper layers > Single-sheet schematics. > > If you want to sell what you produce with the demo, > you can licence this version for $50.I'll probably never sell anything, but I gave CADSoft the $50 just to reward them for supporting Linux.>>and the free support on the newsgroups is first-class. > > Amen.-- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Why am I in this ROOM at in DOWNTOWN PHILADELPHIA? visi.com
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:13:59 GMT, "Max" <nospam@hotmail.com> wrote:>I have used Cadsoft Eagle for many years and have been very happy with it >Before I bought I downloaded and tried everything I could get my hands on >and at that time (8 years ago) some of the cheaper packages wouldn't run and >some of the expensive packages were, well, expensive. I found Eagle to be >the best price/performance tradeoff in my catagory (sub $1000)I'm useing an Eagle professional version too, but I will switch by the next ocasion. The reason is their habitus towards their paying customers. About 3.5 years ago, I downloaded a little Eagle project somewhere from a website I can't even remember. It happened that back then, I reused a very small part of this schema (with copy and paste) in one of my projects and continued to copy and paste the same part from my project into a couple of other projects of mine later on. I forgot the schema I downloaded from said website back then and it disapeard from my PC about two years ago when I switched to a new one. No problem cause I did not further needed this third party schema and therefore did not care for it. So far so good right? Well, not so with Eagle! For about 3 years I did not experienced any problems whatsoever. But this changed after they released version 4.1 to which I upgraded my former fully payed full 4.0 version by buying the upgrade. Thereafter it turned out that some of my projects could no longer be opened. Baffeled about this I opened a support case with Eagles and their final/official reply after quite a long ping pong game was that "my" designs were produced with a cracked version of Eagle alas they would not help me. For those interested, I do have the complete e-mail conversation. Needless to say that I never used a cracked Eagle myself which is obvious since I do have the full version. Even though they know the complete story and even though this behaviour can easily be reproduced and even knowing my license information and also knowing that I'm a full paying customer for several years, they still (and still do) refused to unlock my designs (which I sent them for analysis) just because I once copied a voltage regulator (I think it was) out of a design which aparently was made by some third party with a cracked version. The "funny" part is that I would not have had the slightest chance to avoid this, cause this fact (their attitude against such cases as well as the technical circumstances) is to my knownleadge not documented and the 4.0 version does NOT recognize this "foreign" schema as being made with a cracked version. Would it have done so, I obviousely would not have been able to reuse parts of that design. That's actually clear cause a cracker obviousely will have to crack a version after it's release which at the same time means this can happen to any Eagle user any time again! I do fully understand a companies right to take measures against piracy etc. I do however not understand if they void my own work. That said if say only the very first design would no longer work so be it, or even if they would have asked for money to unlock my projects so be it, but no, no chance - eventhough they confirmed that they technically could unlock my designs therby giving my work back to me. This evil schema part creaped into quite some of my designs with which the only option I have now is to recapture their schemas from scratch! Lucky me the affected projects are not the biggest/most important ones, but still. I just wanted to share this little nice experience with Eagle support and CadSoft as a company to give a little counterweight here. So, before you consider buying Eagle, make yourself aware of the fact that you never ever can exchange a design with a third party cause you never know if projects or parts of projects coming from a third party somewhere later in the future all of a sudden will render your own work useless if you happen to reuse only a single bit made by someone else. This is especially true cause the party which sends you a project may is a fully paying customer too but is having something in his designs which originates from some other source which in turn oringnates from somewhere else - you get the idea. Markus
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 20:00:06 +0200, the renowned Markus Zingg <m.zingg@nct.ch> wrote:>On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:13:59 GMT, "Max" <nospam@hotmail.com> wrote:<snip story> Did you save the previous program version, which could open your files? Best regards, Spehro Pefhany -- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
> (I have never seen an autorouter for which I would pay the asking > price.)I bought the autorouter with the original Eagle program but the only thing I found it useful for was to give me an approximate idea of whether a layout was going to give me trouble in certain areas. I would run the router and if it could get to 70% or better than I knew I could route the whole thing without trouble. I didn't bother with the auto router on the last version and haven't missed it.
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
Markus Zingg wrote:>I downloaded a little Eagle project somewhere from a website[...] >I reused a very small part of this schema >(with copy and paste) in one of my projects >.. . . >after they released version 4.1 >to which I upgraded[...]some of my projects could no longer be opened > >[Cadsoft said] that "my" designs were produced >with a cracked version of Eagle >. . . >knowing that I'm a full paying customer for several years, >they still (and still do) refused to unlock my designs > >[even though] they confirmed that >they technically could unlock my designsThat is inexcusable. If the app can determine that a component is from a cracked version, there is no reason that the same mechanism could not be used to flag a bogus component at the time it is being added. This ex post facto bullshit is way over the line. http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:nfU8yxSZ788J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party+reform+patent+right-to-privacy+zzz+design+copyright
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
"Markus Zingg" <m.zingg@nct.ch> schreef in bericht news:1jisj25b43ucaddcu7sm9n82i8sk98v2ut@4ax.com...> > I just wanted to share this little nice experience with Eagle support > and CadSoft as a company to give a little counterweight here. So, > before you consider buying Eagle, make yourself aware of the fact that > you never ever can exchange a design with a third party cause you > never know if projects or parts of projects coming from a third party > somewhere later in the future all of a sudden will render your own > work useless if you happen to reuse only a single bit made by someone > else. This is especially true cause the party which sends you a > project may is a fully paying customer too but is having something in > his designs which originates from some other source which in turn > oringnates from somewhere else - you get the idea.Unbelievable! These guys ought to be locked up. For life. -- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and '.invalid' when replying by email)
Reply by ●October 24, 20062006-10-24
Has anyone here tried FreePCB? It is available at http://www.freepcb.com/ and has a Yahoo group for support. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/FreePCB/ I believe freepcb.com also has a forum. Max wrote:> I have used Cadsoft Eagle for many years and have been very happy with it > Before I bought I downloaded and tried everything I could get my hands on > and at that time (8 years ago) some of the cheaper packages wouldn't run and > some of the expensive packages were, well, expensive. I found Eagle to be > the best price/performance tradeoff in my catagory (sub $1000) > > > > > "BoysBoysBoys" <ntroast@gmail.com> wrote in message > news:1161633781.537958.264110@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com... > > So PROTEL, P-CAD, AND ALTIUM are the big three? I just want to make > > sure that I start learning schematics and PCB layout with the right > > program. > > > > JeffM wrote: > >> BoysBoysBoys wrote: > >> >What is the most widely used, or the standard? > >> > >> No such animal. > >> You may be able to generalize based on your locale, but even then... > >> http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.design/browse_frm/thread/92c5b75a1af2ce5e/0bbf23b1a9d72985?q=Eagle+OrCad+Protel+Tango+EMA-EDA+p-cad+Protel+Cadence+PADS+AutoEngineer+gEDA+hierarchical+Sure-they-are+not-particularly-realistic+license-costs > > > >
Reply by ●October 25, 20062006-10-25
On Oct 24, 11:00 am, Markus Zingg <m.zi...@nct.ch> wrote:> On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:13:59 GMT, "Max" <nos...@hotmail.com> wrote:...> I just wanted to share this little nice experience with Eagle support > and CadSoft as a company to give a little counterweight here. So, > before you consider buying Eagle, make yourself aware of the fact that > you never ever can exchange a design with a third party cause you > never know if projects or parts of projects coming from a third party > somewhere later in the future all of a sudden will render your own > work useless if you happen to reuse only a single bit made by someone > else. This is especially true cause the party which sends you a > project may is a fully paying customer too but is having something in > his designs which originates from some other source which in turn > oringnates from somewhere else - you get the idea. > > MarkusYou can export schematics and components from Eagle as text files using scripts provided by Cadsoft. You can then import them into the new version to remove the problems if the files become damaged. kevin
Reply by ●October 25, 20062006-10-25