Eagle Alternatives

[arumblack]

Hey all,

Anyone using anything other than Eagle for thier PCB's?

I like Eagle, but the board size limitation makes it unusable for making control panel PCB's.

I have forund KiCAD and Free PCB, which appear to have an unlimited size/pin count. Anyone tried these? I know Stryd_One is using KiCAD. I have installed it and looked at some of the demo files. It looks very capable but I also am not wanting to learn a new interface.

Anyway If you have used these post your thoughts here please.

[ilmenator]

I use Target: http://server.ibfriedrich.com/wiki/ibfwikien/index.php?title=Main_Page

Best regards, ilmenator

[stryd_one]

Anyone using anything other than Eagle for thier PCB's?....

I also am not wanting to learn a new interface.

They're all different, so if you want to stay on the eagle interface, you'll have to stay with eagle....

A few reasons I chose kicad:

Cross platform

Multi language (german is kinda important around here heh)

No limitations, open source

Scripts for converting from eagle

There are things that kicad does better, and things that eagle does better, but all up I think it's a pretty close run. The hardest thing, is if you are used to one app and have to get used to a new interface, which admittedly sucks... but you'll have that problem no matter what package you go to  :-\ 

[Doug Wellington]

I'd also suggest checking out gEDA...

http://www.geda.seul.org/