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  1. #1
    150+ Forum Groupie Tom_G_2010's Avatar
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    Is there any Good PC Board drawing Freeware or Shareware out there?

    Back in the day I had some great freeware that could be used to draw printed circuit board layouts and even one that would convert a schematic into a single or double sided pc board layout. Sad to say I don't even know where those 5 1/4" floppies are anymore and they would not run on my current OS even if I had the disks or a drive to read them.

    I've downloaded a couple "Free" Apps only to find that they were nothing to write home about and some were setup to only feed board designs to a web based company to get them made for a hefty fee. I can etch my own boards so that's not at all what I'm looking for.

    I can hand draw what I need or fake it on any number of generic drawing programs, but that's a pain compared to what I used to do with those older apps. So, I'm wondering if anyone can point me to a legit no strings attached piece of freeware or shareware for doing pc board layouts.

    Thanks in advance for any advice or direction!


    PS: OK, so I need to fess up, I think I still have an 8", and a couple 5 1/4" floppy drives in a box in the garage. I just can't get rid of good junk .
    https://www.facebook.com/mycessnasim PC: Intel Core i7 Haswell @ 3.8GHz, 8Gb Ram, Win 7 64Bit, dual SSDs, GeFroce 780 SIM: P3Dv4.1, FSUIPC5, Link2FSMulti, ASN16, Orbix, REX, BFF Force Feedback

  2. #2
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    Re: Is there any Good PC Board drawing Freeware or Shareware out there?

    Hi Tom,

    As usually there is very few or maybe none offering a "free lunch".
    OK - maybe a free lunch but you have to pay double up for the dinner
    There seems to be some kind of ”limitation” with all of them.

    For my own work I use Diptrace. They use the number of PADs and layers
    as the limiting factor. Otherwise the program is a full blown version.
    For the free version (Non-Profit 500 PADs / 2 layers) – look here.
    Should cover most of your needs.

    Another alternative is Eagle (never tried).
    They have a free version limited to 100mm x 80mm size +++
    which very fast become too small for our needs.

    And there may be other vendors out there.
    Never looked back after start using Diptrace.
    Regards,
    Per-Erik
    www.hoddo.net

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  4. #3
    500+ This must be a daytime job



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    Re: Is there any Good PC Board drawing Freeware or Shareware out there?

    Tom,
    Rsonline has Designspark,fully blown and FREE.
    Les

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  6. #4
    150+ Forum Groupie Tom_G_2010's Avatar
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    Re: Is there any Good PC Board drawing Freeware or Shareware out there?

    Thanks!! I'll be trying both this evening.
    https://www.facebook.com/mycessnasim PC: Intel Core i7 Haswell @ 3.8GHz, 8Gb Ram, Win 7 64Bit, dual SSDs, GeFroce 780 SIM: P3Dv4.1, FSUIPC5, Link2FSMulti, ASN16, Orbix, REX, BFF Force Feedback

  7. #5
    New Member zulucat's Avatar
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    Re: Is there any Good PC Board drawing Freeware or Shareware out there?

    There is also Kicad. It's free and it runs on Windows, Mac OSX & Linux.

    http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/KIC...Software+Suite