Oznog
Active Member
Anybody familiar with multiple packages?
I've used Eagle PCB and am fairly happy with it. The freeware version is very limited in maximum board size though. But I hear a lot of people mentioning Protel and I got the impression it's more popular.
I used Protel a long time ago, the one I had was unstable and I learned to hate it. Part of that might be that I was using the auto-placement feature and it made such poor decisions that being random would have created something easier for the autorouter to handle. Then the demo ran out on it and I dropped it, they made it so you can't just reinstall the demo either. So I'm not sure I used it long enough to fully understand it.
I've seen Protel99 mentioned a lot more than Protel2004. Is 2004 not just an updated version of 99? Is it somehow not as useful? Or- let me guess- they upgraded security since then so hacked versions of later models aren't available?
I've used Eagle PCB and am fairly happy with it. The freeware version is very limited in maximum board size though. But I hear a lot of people mentioning Protel and I got the impression it's more popular.
I used Protel a long time ago, the one I had was unstable and I learned to hate it. Part of that might be that I was using the auto-placement feature and it made such poor decisions that being random would have created something easier for the autorouter to handle. Then the demo ran out on it and I dropped it, they made it so you can't just reinstall the demo either. So I'm not sure I used it long enough to fully understand it.
I've seen Protel99 mentioned a lot more than Protel2004. Is 2004 not just an updated version of 99? Is it somehow not as useful? Or- let me guess- they upgraded security since then so hacked versions of later models aren't available?