ma62141@cs.tut.fi (Antila Marko) (05/28/91)
Hello there all PCB-designers! Here is short review of some German PCB-cad packages for Atari ST. I evaluated the demo versions the authors of those programs sent me. The biggest drawback (or advantage to some of you:=) is that all these programs are in German and the documents are also in German. --- program: Layout 1.3 PD author : Uwe Klatt price : PD This is a working public domain PCB-cad package . There is output support only for 9-pin printer and it's limited to 2-sided boards. But it's very good starting point. It is somewhat slow but it has adequate zooming and object handling functions. I liked this one (especially the price range is OK :=). You can't really use accessories with this program (it tends to crash then). --- program : Connecti_CAD author : Uwe Klatt price : about DM 50,- Connecti_CAD is basically expanded version of Layout 1.3. It is faster, can output to 24-pin printer (+ other formats) and it has more line widths and sizes of soldering dots. Nice "Mac-type" fonts. --- program: PCB-Edit author : Rosin Software price : about DM 200,- This program is different from all the other programs in the way it handles graphic objects. It's not vector oriented (when scaling is relatively easy) but raster (or pixel) oriented so it "draws" the whole layout to the memory and outputs to screen the visible portion of that layout. Because of this concept it is very fast but all the zooming function etc are seriously limited. You can edit objects pixel by pixel and thus generate some weird pad-forms and lines. To a certain degree it's only general drawing program but this means that you can also draw schematics with this package. --- program: PCB-Layout author : Thomas Praefcke price : about DM 200,- This is very similar to Connecti-CAD but the routing options are better (program does intelligent routing). Doesn't support 9-pin printer (but supports 24-pin printer). Accessories work well with this program. --- program : Platon 1.4 author : VHF-Computer price : about DM 300,- This is the most comprehensive PCB-CAD package of all these reviewed. Almost all of its parameters are user-configurable (line widths, pad sizes etc). There are plenty of output formats, dot-matrix printers, laserprinters and possibly gerber (that may cost extra). You can also build a component libraries and extract the bill-of-materials. The user interface is somewhat confusing (drop-down + hierachical pop-up menus + icons) but there really are plenty of options. There is also version 2.0 available (it costs about DM 500,-) and its evidently enchanced version of the v1.4 :=). --- I could send demos of these programs to atari.arch or some similar place provided that a) they aren't there already b) there is enough general interest to the demos c) it is totally legal (maybe have to check from the authors) I haven't used these programs for real designing, just gone through the menus & options and checked what's available so if there are real users of these programs around they may have different opinions and views of many things. Comments & corrections are welcome. Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not connected with any of the previously mentioned PCB-CAD:s :=) * Marko Antila (ma62141@tut.fi) ! PhoHome +358-31-183539 * * Tampere University of Technology ! PhoWork +358-31-161900 * * Signal Processing Lab, P.O.Box 527 ! ====================== * * SF-33101 Tampere, Finland ! Vacuum tube rules OK *