| 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 |