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I'm very much against software piracy but if you're starting out in electrical engineering, you are doing an absolute disservice by not using a pirated version of Altium. Not only is it basically the industry standard (Cadence, Orcad, etc are mostly propped up by legacy clients, especially in aerospace and defence) but its interface and features are leaps and bounds beyond anything else. Pretty much all ECAD software is a naive port of the pen and paper schematic design process to mouse and keyboard (it's still called "schematic capture" in contrast to "PCB design") but Altium has moved far beyond that, especially with the introduction of cloud features in the last five years (like an online repository for user and vendor created footprints). The field of electrical engineering has been extremely averse to the ideas of open source but for many reasons, Altium's online resources among them, that is finally starting to change. Eagle does have a large community with companies like Sparkfun and Adafruit but those pale in comparison to the community forming around Altium, which is made up of a large number of vendors and professionals who are starting to grasp the benefits of sharing data.

Considering how much the package costs and how much Altium benefits from the growing community, I honestly don't think they'd mind if you pirated the software a few years before you could afford it.

Altium also recently developed a free (!) entry-level version, CircuitMaker (http://circuitmaker.com/).

We looked at CircuitMaker but it appears that you can't have private designs - they are all public. So fine for open source but difficult to use for product dev.

>it's still called "schematic capture" in contrast to "PCB design"

So what is it called when I capture a schematic in order to do some SPICE simulations on it? "PCB design minus the designing PCB part"?

"Capture" in this context means "the act of putting information in a form that a computer can use or read"¹, so I don't see how the phrase "schematic capture" is archaic when it mentions computers in its definition.

¹http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capture

Are you arguing that a term can't be archaic because its definition has the word "computer" in it? That's silly.

The term capture comes from a time when ECAD programs were unwieldy and difficult to use (we're talking 60s and 70s) and components weren't as complex so engineers first designed the schematic using pencil and paper and only then "captured" it in a digital format using an ECAD program. We design circuits and yet still capture schematics because of the usability of half century old software.

I used Cadence a fair bit, back in university (CMU) about 8 years ago - it is really surprisingly poorly made and maintained software.

Very powerful, huge number of features. Crashed if you looked at it funny. Some windows made with TK, some with Athena widgets, some with GTK1, some with straight X11. Can't copy and paste between most of them.

I'm glad to hear it's not really the industry standard I had the impression it was. I had the impression that most purely-hardware-focused engineers didn't care about software quality much and so the whole industry just naturally leaned that way.

haha, you almost exactly described the Cadence HDL simulation suite, used for HDL simulation in ASIC/FPGA design. But... it is widely used in industry. Their tools are so buggy, and poorly made.

The thing with hardware is that once you've designed the PCB and it works to the spec, you don't need to do anything until some part you need goes out of production. This means that the major ECAD money comes from shops that do a lot of one off projects which means that aerospace and defense are king. Since those industries are risk averse and spend much more time in manufacturing and testing than in design, they never really had much care for the quality of design software, even when it costs an arm and a leg like Cadence. Since these industries have extensive quality control and review processes, a bug or a crash would only cost a little bit of time. Remember though that Orcad was first developed in the mid-eighties so with the risk averse clients it's no wonder it hasn't aged well.

But yes, rest assured, outside of some (rather large) niches, no one really tolerates the garbage that is the old ECAD packages.

On the other hand, if you get accustomed to using better software, and end up working at a place that uses, say, Orcad 16.2, it will be much more painful of an experience.

I work at such a place (16.6, to be sure), and agree that it is indeed quite painful.

Fortunately, after almost 2 long years of pushing, a colleague and I finally convinced our branch of its technical merits and justified the business case to switch.

True, Altium has done a great job with bringing in the modern features but we weren't comfortable shipping a product with "borrowed" software. We've found some tools that help with the others. For example, SnapEDA has a great component library of footprints and symbols.

Instead of pirating, maybe better to check out some low-cost tools from Altium like CircuitStudio, or even CircuitMaker (which is free). If it's the data sharing and community you're after, check out SnapEDA too, which works with vendors to provide libraries for free to engineers in all major design formats (Altium, EAGLE, KiCad, OrCAD, etc.)

The team at CERN has made big improvements to KiCad, including the push and shove router: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCG4daPvuVI

Another good reason to think about KiCad is if you care about open formats (vs. Altium for example.) CERN's own statement [1]: "We think that KiCad can do to PCB design what the gcc compiler did to software: ensure there are no artificial barriers to sharing so that design and development knowledge can flow more freely."

[1] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki

Ironically, CERN has one of the best open source part libraries for Altium.

That's really cool of them.

Where can I find this library? Googling led me to the two sites below, but there's no download location in them.

[1] http://ts-dep-dem.web.cern.ch/ts-dep-dem/services/library/

[2] http://information-technology.web.cern.ch/services/software/...

I found a 460MB CERN_ALTIUM_LIB_july_2014.7z file on torrent sites. Is this what you're talking about?

This may not be pleasant in practice, but is there anything that offers a text-based language for describing schematics and/or PCBs? (Similar to the way OpenSCAD has a DSL/Scheme for 3D modelling?)

From what I understand, VHDL etc. are for FPGAs and ICs, I'm just talking about boards with components.

Absolutely nothing is stopping anyone from writing Gerber files by hand. It's just a flat text file with a well documented format.

Likewise, Eagle (and I am sure, KiCad) files are text based.

What are some of the reputable "small board-houses"? Any recommendations?

I always had good results with Advanced Circuits out in Colorado, but this is over a decade ago now.

OSH Park is very cheap and good for bare boards: https://oshpark.com/

If you want somebody to populate the boards for you, I love Macrofab: https://macrofab.com/

First I've heard of Macrofab, have you ever tried circuithub? I've been using the latter and wonder how they compared.

Edit: just checked out Macrofab and they seem to be more expensive than circuithub at least for the couple example projects I threw into the quoting engine.

OSH Park are also beginner friendly. Allowing you to import your design directly from Eagle rather than having to generate individual layer files and also not requiring you to specify copper thickness, board finish, etc.

I'm going to throw in a plug for OSH Stencils. Cheap, high quality PCB stencils. I'm never going back to a syringe full of paste! Had a QFN-64 that I hated doing because of that.

For simpler prototype boards I use oshpark.com, but a big downside is no electrical testing. For more important/complex stuff, I've been very happy with jetpcb.com in Taiwan. Full e-test and I get the boards in about 5 days

For small personal projects, iTeadStudio[1] is my go-to PCB fab house. If their design constraints fit your needs, I'd def recommend giving them a shot. I've personally spun 10-ish projects with them and have yet to be disappointed...just try not to push an order around Chinese New Year if you're in a rush.

[1] https://www.itead.cc/open-pcb/pcb-prototyping.html

BayAreaCircuits is pretty cheap, in the USA and you can have boards in under a week.

I also like macrofab if you want something assembled.

A few times I have ordered from the board houses on Ebay. Like $20 for 10+ boards and they come in about 2 weeks.

Curious if you've heard about the sale of CadSoft to AutoDesk, I was about to write Eagle off myself but I'm hoping they give it a little love.

http://www.premierfarnell.com/content/sale-cadsoft-0

Yeah, I heard about it. I think Eagle is a sinking ship. The low-end PCB design software market is going to be swallowed up by KiCAD, which has been getting much better ever since CERN decided to sponsor it.

Can't beat free and unencumbered. Thank the European taxpayer and move on, IMO. The market is going to be KiCAD at the bottom, Altium Designer / Pads / Orcad in the middle, then Zuken / Allegro / Expedition at the top.

I'm so glad you mentioned that! KiCAD was infuriating last time I tried it. I considered getting involved and trying to contribute, but ended up moving out of PCB design and back into system software instead. It's good to know that the project is getting some real investment and that the whole open-source promise is working out once again. I'll take another look.

Holy shit, that JLink is expensive. What does it get me more than the JTAG<->FTDI<->OpenOCD<->GDB setup that I have currently, who's boards cost my ~$100 in super low volume?

JLink is updated very quickly and works with every arm platform and IDE imaginable.

Yes, this exactly. It is way ahead of OpenOCD if you are working with hardware released in the last 12-18 months.

I mean, GCC and OpenOCD had CortexM4 support before anybody else as far as I could tell. Keil and IAR wouldn't even give us a release date at the time.

FWIW -- for non-commercial uses you can get a J-Link EDU for about $70. The hardware is identical to J-Link BASE.

Just grab a cheap Chinese clone off of Ebay. They're pretty much completely functionally identical in my experience.

Interview with Autodesk about the CadSoft EAGLE purchase :

https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/07/05/exclusive-interview-wit...

Matt Berggren (Director of Autodesk Circuits) is a big supporter of the DIY / maker community.

I've used KiCAD for a bunch of 2 layer and 4 layer prototypes for my company. The GIMP vs. Photoshop comparison is very accurate in my opinion!