magik@chinet.UUCP (Ben Liberman) (05/01/86)
[ ] What follows is a copy of my original request and most of the replies that I received. Thanks to all who responded. Ben Liberman ihnp4!chinet!magik or ihnp4!homebru!magik ---------------------------------------- > I'm looking for recomendations/info on software. I want a mac at work and > to justify it I have to come up with at least a program to do drafting and > ploting (size C). It'd be nice to be able to do printed circuit layout > (and if I had my wish, auto-routing) ---------------------------------------- I don't know much about the subject, but 'PCB Design' or McCAD (same program goes by different names) is capable of 4-layer PCB work and can send it to ImageWriter, LaserWriter, or Houstom DMP Plotter. Looked fairly extensive, though the screen update was sometimes slow. Hope this helps a little...let me know if you want more info. -Chris ------- Chris Borton, UC San Diego Undergraduate CS; Micro Consultant, UCSD borton@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU || ...!{ucbvax,decvax,noscvax,ihnp4,bang}!sdcsvax!borton ---------------------------------------- If you find anything, PUHLEASE either write me a note or post a followup. We could REALLY use something like this at Reed... The thing that would be really nice is to have it generate film directly on a Laserwriter -- we've been doing this with MacDraw, which seems to be a physically ok setup, but obviously a pain in the caboose to actually lay out a pc board in MacDraw... Bart Massey ..tektronix!reed!bart BTW, for drafting schemos, I've put together a set of MacDraw objects to cover most of the common stuff, which provides a nice interim solution. Let me know if you want a copy... ---------------------------------------- The two PC layout systems I am familiar with are from Bishop Graphics (L.A. area) and VAMP (Colorado). Both are pretty crufty, the Bishop Graphics system especially so- once you put a trace down, it can't be edited like a polygon in MacDraw can be; you must ungroup the trace into independent segments, then delete and redraw the ones you want to change! Its not clear how much better the VAMP system is. I've briefly played with a schematic capture program called ParaGenesis from someplace in Colorado, and it was a lose. None of the CAD software available on a MAC comes close to the many systems available on IBM PC's I'm afraid to say. If you find any others, or any decent schematic capture systems, let me or the net know. --------------------------------------- Ben - Here are some sources for CAE/CAD systems for the Mac. Unfortunately I do not have any experience with any of them. Hope this helps. If you do happen to get any of these I'd appreciate some feedback on them. Jeff Wallace {decvax,ucbvax}!trwrb!felix!jeff FileNet Corp. Costa Mesa, CA Quik Circuit -- PC Board Design system Bishop Graphics Box 5007 Westlake Village, CA 91359 818-991-2600 ParaGenesis -- Electronic Design Software Advanced Engineering Solutions, Inc. 75 Manhattan Drive, Suite 302 Boulder, Colorado 80303 303-499-2910 PAD -- CAE package for Macintosh & Lisa 2 Rune Software Suite 214 80 Eureka Square Pacifica, CA 94044 415-355-4851 McCAD -- PCB CAD Workstation for the Mac VAMP Inc. P.O. Box 411 Los Angeles, CA 90028 213-466-5533 MICRO-CAP II -- Analog simulation Spectrum Software 1021 S. Wolfe Road Sunnyvale, CA 94086 408-738-4387 ---------------------------------------------
bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) (05/05/86)
We have used the Bishop/Douglas package here on the Mac to do about
a dozen boards ranging from a 200 hole 2 layer proto board to a
2,500 hole 4 layer 60020 system. The human interface is ok, the editing
interface needs a little work, the output is GREAT from a photo-plotter.
I cost us about $700 to generate the film for the SBC20 board and
about $2,000 for a proto run of 5 systems including the motherboard,
memory cards, and I/O. It took about 3 months part-time to do the placement
and layout the boards inhouse -- much of which was design iteration
to overcome the high density -- 2,500 pins with three 32bit busses in
a 6" by 11" form factor using 13mil traces on 25mil centers.
The gerber film was very clean, and the boards fab easy.
We have done several boards by check ploting on the imagewriter 4X and
shooting the listing front lighted 50%, and backlighting the film for another
50% reduction. This drops out most of the pin holes in the printer
artwork and generates good medium quality 2 layer boards with about a 5%
placement accuracy -- fine for proto 2 layer runs. Similar boards cost about
$30-$60 to photoplot which is by far the best way to go if not in a rush.
Bishop will do film turnaround from either modem or disk in a few days,
or faster if a rush. The 3.0 software release is MUCH faster and handles
much larger boards than we have done. I would like to see better functions
for handling lines and pads --- a draw like interface would be great.
It's present interface is very simplistic. It saved us several times it's price
in the layouts we have done to date, ... it's worth the price. We haven't
used any of the other packages, but phone calls to their sales teams
don't seem to yeild any outstanding reason to buy a new package either
(IE. they aren't significantly faster or have much better functionality).
The support people at Bishop (Tim and Mary) have been great in helping get
some rush film conversions done ... I'm a happy user ...
--
John Bass (DBA: Fastime, DBA:DMS Design)
DMS Design (System Design, Performance and Arch Consultants)
{dual,fortune,polyslo,hpda}!dmsd!bass (805) 546-9141