evandude
New Member
Rolf said:I didn't like Eagle at all... finally found PCB123 which is much more user friendly, IMHO. It is a free download.
I can easily see how one might get that impression. Maybe it's just cultural software convention differences between here and germany, but eagle definitely feels "weird" in many ways. (ie: 'undo' is alt+backspace instead of ctrl+z, and what they call 'cut' is actually what we call 'copy', among other things) and it's got plenty of annoying issues. And you HAVE to get used to making your own parts.
However, once you get used to it it's not too bad. The reasons that I still use eagle are that A) it makes nice-looking schematics, making it useful even just for making quick schematics to put on a website, whereas some of the other packages I've tried made pretty ugly ones, and B) I find laying out PCB's to be quite quick and easy, even when adding things like pours. Also, features like autorouting and DRC are nice. The board size limitation does suck, and I am still upset with the company for not offering any better options for software licenses that would be suitable for hobbyists, but as long as I'm doing small boards it's still my first choice.
Another reason I haven't gotten into using packages like PCB123 is their direct tie to the company's commercial PCB manufacturing business. I don't know the specifics of that one in particular, but I know that some similar packages have given people problems such as not being able to print a layout (to make DIY boards), or inability to export data that could be used at another (cheaper) PCB fab house. Not that eagle's perfect there either, but you can export board artwork easily, and there is at least one low-cost board house that accepts eagle format files.