[chbot] Eagle layout

[Andrew Errington]

Kicad does 3D rendering, and has done for a while.  Here's a recent improvement:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicad-3d/

A

On 26/02/2014, Volker Kuhlmann <list0570 at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> On Wed 26 Feb 2014 12:05:35 NZDT +1300, Jasper Mackenzie wrote:
>
>> In the arena of hobbyists style eda, I have just started with Kicad,
>> which
>> like everything foss has its idiosyncracies, yet I suspect will be better
>> in the long run as it is full featured, not crippled and... GPL!
>
> I can never make up my mind whether to start something with eagle or
> kicad.
>
> eagle is far more common, more polished, and has a huge number of public
> libraries available, especially for arduino projects, and is crippled in
> the free version.
>
> kicad is FOSS, comes as an integrated system with gerber viewer,
> interfaces to circuit simulation (spice), and gets better all the time.
> The lack of component libraries may not be that much of downside,
> because often the components are not up to scratch (schematic symbol,
> footprint, pin definitions) and needs changing anyway. Redrawing
> a component in kicad from an eagle part should not take too long.
>
> Fritzing isn't really that far advanced; its feature of making 3D
> visualisations of the breadboard is a gimmick, and drawing schematics
> with it is simply not fit for purpose (the SVG rendering is unusably
> slow). That's why all of the project only have a PCB layout done with
> it. Both eagle and kicad are superior with that.
>
> None will do 3D visualisations of PCBs with components.
>
> Is anyone actually using auto-routers? I never got much use out of them
> because they leave things in a mess, and the remaining 5% tracks are
> never routable (that's why the auto-router gave up!), so what's the
> point.
>
> I will not touch that designspark stuff. Yuck.
>
> Volker
>
> --
> Volker Kuhlmann
> http://volker.top.geek.nz/	Please do not CC list postings to me.
>
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