[jpwright]

I work with PCB design tools a lot -- Cadence, Altium, Eagle, you name it.

While there's definitely room for better software, the most frustrating thing about the PCB CAD ecosystem right now is (a) lack of interoperability between file formats (for schematic, layout, and gerbers), and (b) lack of publicly accessible components. It is a huge pain to build tons of component symbols and footprints for each design. There are large EE companies that employ people just for this task!

The idea of paying for more extensions seems incredibly frustrating. I'd rather know what the cost will be upfront.

I am hopeful that eventually someone will clearly win this market by creating/updating good, free software, in combination with open/convertible file formats, a huge component database, and monetize via paid access to special components/automatic component creation, or an integrated manufacturing solution.

[csirac2]

Agree, I'm 80% software these days but ~8 years ago I discovered Eagle and found it was a huge relief at the time coming from Protel (now Altium).

I've been getting my feet wet again; perhaps Altium has fixed the UX which drove me away originally but they don't seem (until now?) to have had any entry-level appropriate pricing.

And whilst I could pick up Eagle 7 recently and get productive again real quick, the fact that I still had to draw my own PCB footprints which are intrinsically inseparable from the overall component definition is so disappointing.

A separate PCB footprint library, separate in the sense that component packages should be normalized and trivially re-usable across devices without error-prone copy-pasta madness seemed painfully obvious 10 years ago and it's still painfully obvious now. Drawing a new schematic symbol and wiring that up to physical pins in a PCB footprint is no big deal, but I just hate having to draw a new PCB footprint from a datasheet. Even on the off-chance that you can copy-paste from some other device with similar enough package, you still end up with inconsistent silkscreen/gate naming conventions etc. because each part library author does things differently.

[chillingeffect]

You guys are both right. The incompatibility b/t PCB design tools and resources is farcical.

Unfortunately, software like web frameworks and office productivity gets so many more eyeballs than PCB design software. The market size of PCB design software is small. A single copy of gEDA/Altium/Eagle/Orcad/Kicad can produce a piece of hardware that one billion people use. You could say the same for a single copy of Word, but people own and interact with thousands of different documents, but only a handful to a dozen PCBs and most people are using the same ones (iPhone, laptop motherboard, etc.).

As more hobbyists engage at the Arduino level, simple, free tools can open up a bit... but professional stuff will still suffer severe inertial effects - the value of a single PCB design program is simply too huge.

I don't see this free(asterisk) offering from Altium as any more than a freemium pattern to divert marketshare from Eagle in particular. I use Eagle, but the EEs at work say Altium is full of bugs. Its 3d board viewer is a gimmick that hooks a lot of people, but it's not as critical as having the proper components.

p.s. for simple PCB design, there are numerous free tools:

http://www.electroschematics.com/2249/pcb-design-software/

and here's a brief overview of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_EDA_software

[madengr]

3D is not a gimmick, it's critical for me as I can pass a STEP file to the mechanical guy.

[neltnerb]

Yeah, I agree. It looked great until I read "An extendable platform means that as you create more diverse and challenging designs, you’ll be able to purchase enhancements to expand your software as you need."

Not knowing what threshold of "diverse and challenging" triggers "purchase enhancements" makes this something I have no interest in being locked into. If they had a list of add on functionality with price, sure, but unspecified? No way.

Does the autorouter come for free? Or is it a $1000 add on? Component library? Board size limitations? Number of layers? 3D modeling? IDF export and import? Putting arbitrary graphics into the silkscreen? Heck, gerber file export? Website is way too light on information for me to touch this with a 10 foot pole.

[zakhomuth]

Altium costs about $10K per user. I'd expect the upgrades to be on par with that.

[blueintegral]

Upverter is working on a tool to help convert between all of those formats: https://github.com/upverter/schematic-file-converter

[jimmyswimmy]

It doesn't seem like this accomplishes the most important task - library conversion. If I could convert an Altium library to Eagle, well, that would be the last year I spent money on software licensing. You end up with this investment of time in libraries that are vendor-specific. That's what keeps most of the EEs I know with one software package or another.

Also their companies don't usually offer a choice. Big companies have a librarian who is in charge of the official part libraries. But if you could easily port an OrCAD library to Altium or Eagle or whatever, that would be a game changer, I think.

[zakhomuth]

Zak from Upverter here - You're right!

But we've got a newer version of this converter project that we are cleaning up right now. Its also able to do Altium, Cadence, and their libraries. Coming soon!

[michaelt]

  The idea of paying for more extensions seems incredibly 
  frustrating. I'd rather know what the cost will be upfront.

Isn't that Altium's existing model? And for all features, the upfront cost is about $7000 per user?

It's not an unreasonable price for big companies (if it boosts the productivity of an engineer costing $100k+) but there's a lot of people who aren't going to spend $7,000 (anyone who isn't doing PCB design full time as a profession). If Altium want to sell something that costs less than $7000 (maybe $200-$500 for a perpetual license like Eagle) they will either have to:

(a) Take far less money from their existing $7,000 customers or (b) Provide a cut-down version that meets the needs of the $200-$500 market without replacing the $7,000 product.

Much though I'd like it if they did (a), I think they're a lot more likely to do (b).

[seddona]

https://circuithub.com/ is close to having you covered on the library + manufacturing side. We're just missing symbol/footprint export (on the way).

Disclosure I am a co-founder of CircuitHub.

[fallingmeat]

+1 for circuithub. Andy gave me a brief tour last weekend and really impressed. Worth a try and costs you nothing to get a near dinstant quote on pcb fab by uploading you design files.

[zakhomuth]

Most of what you're asking for exists in Upverter.

* Our default account is free & open-source. * We've made UX a huge priority * We've got the largest and most complete component library in the world * We have an open source project for converting all of the ugly old propriety formats into an open, documented json format * We monetize through privacy similar to github

And we've built a whole bunch of magic into Upverter that none of the other tools can even touch:

* 5 min setup: Nothing to install, maintain, no versions, no patches, no virtual machines, no need for Windows NT or some outdated OS to run the software etc. It's all online, pretty easy.

* Fully collaborative, and version controlled: You can see who made which change, when, roll changes back and fourth, including in editor issue tracking - all the same perks as designing software.

* Intuitive: Modern UI and UX, no infinite menus or buried features - our biggest user feedback is that Upverter is simply way, way easier to use than anything else.

* 10x Faster: parts are easier to create, you can do schematics and layouts at the same time, you can use open source parts, and build on open source reference designs, reuse modules... no syncing netlists, and no wasted effort.

* 10x cheaper: ($40 per user per month.) No huge upfront payment, and no hidden "maintenance" charges. Altium just jacked their prices up to $10K for a single user licence, Mentor and Orcad are just as bad and were seeing a lot of inbound because of it.

* Agile and responsive. Our support team is our dev team. If they can push some code to make your life easier overnight, it will happen. If you run into a problem, they will fix it in real time.

* Designed for growth. Sharing, collaboration, version control, flex users - you name it, its baked it. You wont run into a wall in 3 months, and you wont need to switch packages when you raise more money.

* Table stakes. It does everything that any of the other packages do. You dont have to give up any performance, complexity, or sophistication - so most of this is magic, extra, and unique to Upverter.

+ More of our Magic Features: IPC generators / BGA generators, Generics, Real-time design rule checking, Trace ghosting & Net highlighting when routing, Fast toggle between schematic & layout / Multi monitor support, Auto sync & save, Unlimited persistent undo, redo, In-design issue tracking, Fast module creation for design reuse, Auto schematic routing, Flex users, sharing, embedding, Real-time design collaboration, Cross probing

I really recommend you check it out! upverter.com

[coryrc]

Except there's absolutely no way I'm going to base my products (which could last twenty years or more) around a SaaS website. I can still open designs made in MS-DOS Protel (and have), while your company might be gone tomorrow. I hate having to hack gerber files because I don't have the source and it really limits changes.

[paulgerhardt]

The same thing could have been said about Github three years ago. We use Upverter at Lockitron for one off's (factory test boards, misc. for fun hack boards for our coffee machine, etc.) The tools aren't there today for mass production stuff (more of a problem with the vendors than Upverter). I would be surprised if this is always the case.

As Upverter grows, so will their applicable use cases. Online services have this weird power-law thing going for them that software from a single vendor can't keep up with on 5 year timescales.

[coryrc]

Git fully works without Github.

Can't even view your schematics if you stop paying every month to Upverter or they close.

[zakhomuth]

We totally understand that fear. This is our approach to solving it: https://github.com/upverter/schematic-file-converter

[bravo22]

Yeah but my experience with Upverter is that it has been lacking in features. I wouldn't trust it to design anything serious.

It feels like a web version of Eagle -- which isn't a good thing. I know I'm sounding negative but I think EE's are very particular about their toolset and while most other tools out there suck it would still be a hill for me and most EE's that I know to climb to switch over to something like Upverter.

If you guys polished it up and paid more attention to the user experience you'd have a very compelling product that would take the market.

[pinkyand]

Zak, what about design reuse of pcb modules likes circuits.io does? Any plans?

[mwoodworth]

Hey Pinkyand, Already up and running, here is an example https://upverter.com/Willian/5836a558aea96a1b/Arduino-Due-Sh...

[madengr]

Making symbols is not that time consuming, and footprints are easy with IPC wizard in Altium. The footprints are sometimes tuned for your assembly flow anyway, so one size may not fit all.