Re: advice on selecting new PCB design package

DMBPrescott@xxxxxxx wrote:
Look, common sense must tell you that you aren't going to get a product
to handle 6 layers for nothing.
You can buy good quality CAD for a reasonable amount nowadays so why
mess with a free product like gEDA?

Because products like gEDA aren't just about being free (although
that is nice). They are about giving you _full_ control over your
design. Common sense says that commercial entities are
interested in making money (right?) so they will do as much as
possible to retain control over your designs that you created using
their product (that is, lock you into using their product exclusively)
and make it as hard as possible to use a competitor's product. I
like to control the software I use.

Here's a good list of reasons why somebody would want to use
gEDA (or any free software/OSS for that matter):

http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda:faq#why_what_makes_geda_so_different_from_other_eda_tools
(sorry about the long link)

[snip]
Rule of thumb: if you're a hobbyist, a technofreak, and/or design small
and very simple two sided boards with just a few standard components
then give the freebes a try. If you're doing any kind of commercial
level boards of any size above small and simple then expect to pay at
least $500 and upwards for something decent and reliable.

Here's a list of successful projects on the 'net (there are more out
there; I just haven't found them and some are commercial people
obviously do not post their designs ) that use gEDA:

http://geda.seul.org/links.html#projects

I would say that some of them are fairly non-trivial. It becoming
more and more evident that free software/OSS tools are capable
of being used to create complex designs.

-Ales

--
Ales Hvezda
ahvezda AT seul.org
http://geda.seul.org

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