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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

Several points:

* KiCAD has become a great tool for designing boards, even fairly complex ones. And it's completely free, both in terms of freedom and money. Don't get locked into EAGLE, which is becoming increasingly obsolete (development is glacially slow) and will suddenly become quite expensive to use once you want a certain board size or a number of layers.

* There are multiple PCB services in China, itead.cc, seeedstudio (both use the same PCB factory), pcbway.com and more. All offer great prices.

* For small boards, OSHpark.com is actually cheaper. Also, their boards come with ENIG finish by default, which you really want for SMD work.

* The companion OSHstencils.com is a fantastic resource: every board I order gets a stencil made.

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http://pcbshopper.com/

Use this tool to choose the cheapest PCB option. It takes into account many different Shenzen PCB houses and picks the best one for the board size/color/etc specs you choose.

I just jumped into this thread thinking "man I really hope he did something clever and made a 6 layer board with vias, awesome grounding, and low dielectric constants at home" rather than him just firing the board off to a house and getting some standard FR4 back. KiCad post-CERN is great, nearly Altium 16-levels of good (arguably better in some cases).

For some DIY goodness -- Paul Carlson's method[1] is still my favorite home method for making what-I-consider-really-almost-production-grade boards. Also throwing my hat in the ring for OSHPark as being the community/my vendor of choice as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au2ba5gWLWk

Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.

I've used Diptrace, KiCad, Altium, and Cadence Allegro and KiCad was by far the worst of these for handling parts.

I believe so, yes, though the degree to which this is true depends on whether or not you were using the beta at the time. The latest KiCad stable is worth a look if you haven't tried it in a while

> Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.

It's pretty bad. Lots of quirks, I still haven't guessed the right incantations for it to notice libs you added, managing library paths is a mess, and you have to do most of that work for every project.

But then again, coming from EAGLE, I'm used to this stuff being incredibly crappy. I don't know — do other tools get this right?

I've used a couple of tool$ AKA commercial tools

Cadence Allegro PCB Designer is a right steaming pile. The whole issue with path's are a problem. You don't have libraries like you do in Altium or ancient ORCAD, you have directories of files that define pads and parts.

Lately poking about with Altium. I think it's fairly good.

I still have a copy of the old ORCAD circa late nineties, was 'okay' Or put it this way, needed to layout a PCB in 2005 and tried Eagle and... dug out and installed ORCAD from 1998.

Altium does an amazing job with their integrated libraries. You create an integrated library, add a schematic library and a footprint library to it, and compile it like any other design project. You can also use supplier search to import part parameters from distributors.

+1 for OSHpark, I can get boards in my hands in 4 days using their expedited service.

pcbshopper.com is an excellent comparison shopping tool for prototype PCBs. Enter the specifications for your board and it will quote prices from dozens of board houses.

Have you ever used DipTrace?

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