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Search WWW Search seattlerobotics.orgFinding PCB SoftwareKevin RossAbout 7 years ago, several members of the SRS were lucky enough to get a special dealfrom Protel. They sold us, through a school, copies of the Protel for DOS programsAutotrax and Protel Schematic. This was old software package, but it turned out to bequite reliable and actually works pretty good. The software was fairly easy to learn,simple in the number of features, and except for a few minor quirks, works extremely well.I have been using Protel Autotrax and Schematic ever since. I have successfully used it tocreate my HC12 products, and the BotBoard Plus boards.Not all is bliss, however!
The DOS based programs don't support any of the newerhardware. For me to get a picture out of Protel and into the Encoder requires some juryrigged methods of converting file formats. I use no less than 4 utility programs inconverting my schematics into something that can be electronically distributed. Inaddition, the program runs in 640x480 resolution. I normally have a 1600x1280 desktop on a21' monitor. I also can only print to a Laserjet printer, and the output of gerberfiles is really quite a pain.I have been willing to put up with these limitations because the software does what Ineed most of the time. I long, however, to have a capable program that will interact withthe rest of the world.
Jan 01, 2005 Now that IVEX has closed its doors, does anyone know the following: 1) Who owns the software rights? 2) Who.has. the software (source code)? 3) Different people or same person? Precision Liquid Metering and Dispensing Systems IVEK systems feature ceramic positive displacement pump heads coupled with a stepping motor drive that allows the system to be highly precise with flow rates from nanoliters to 9 liters/minute.
Therefore, I have been searching for a new set of layout andschematic software for nearly 2 years. Switching to a new program is proving to bedifficult. There are a number to choose from, but none of the packages I have tried so farhave convinced me enough to make the jumpThis article is going to document how I have evaluated several PCB programs, andsuggest a few that you might like to try, and many that you might like to avoid based onmy experiences. My CriteriaI have some relatively straight forward desires in my PCB program. I want the abilityto. Draw a schematic. Run an electrical rule check to insure that I didn't do something stupid.
Import the schematic data into a PCB program. Layout the PCB.
Run a design rule check on the PCB. Print to a printer. Output gerber files. Do all of the above without crashing or corrupting my designThis seemed like a pretty straight forward list of wants. When I started my search, Iassumed that I would be able to find a package over the weekend, and purchase it on Mondaymorning. Turns out I had drastically underestimated the amount of time required. Actually,I guess I had over estimated the abilities of the software designers for these CADprograms.
I had assumed that most of the commerically available packages would have, after5 years of Windows/95 availability, been able to create software that at least made someattempt at behaving like a normal Windows program. I also assumed there would have beenenough time to work out some of the bugs, build up a respectable set of default libraries,and hopefully make these programs much easier to use.Well, I hoped for too much! Granted that PCB software isn't a high volume product, sowe are unlikely to find a Microsoft or Adobe quality of program. But for the money beingasked for many of these packages, it is rather depressing to see the state of affairs inthis narrow vertical market.As I sit here, I ask myself if I am being a little rough on the developers of theseprograms. I really don't think I am.
I will admit there is some pretty good starts on themarket, but nothing so far has impressed me enough to get out my checkbook.And now, I present my opinions on a series of different programs. I am going to listthem in order of preference, starting with the most preferred, down to the real stinkers! EagleCost: Free for unregistered copies. $99 for a decent set offunctionality, $600 for the Standard, $1200 for the ProfessionalIf you have read anything I have ever written about Eagle, you probably know I have asome serious issues with this program. However, after careful consideration of thefeatures vs price vs pain, I have decided that Eagle is probably at the top of the list ofcontenders.
The Good Stuff:This package is by far the best deal for the buck. You can download a fully functionalfreeware version for nothing, and play with it for as long as you wish.
It comes with aschematic editor, a PCB layout program, and a very functional auto-router module. You arerestricted in the free and lowest registration amount to having a board that is4 x 3.2 inches, and two layers. For most projects, like the BotBoard Plusor my HC12 boards, this is more than enough room. The program attempts to be highlyintegrated between the Schematic and PCB editors, and generally does a good job.
Theschematic editor does all of the basic functions, allowing you to place and wire up partsonto the schematic. It has an electrical rules check, which is used to insure you haven'tconnected two outputs together, or done anything else that might cause problems.The library concept in Eagle is a good one (with a lousy implementation!). The Libraryeditor allows you to create a Symbol (used in your Schematic), a Package (used in yourPCB), and a Device (which is a combination of the two). Thus, you used the same libraryregardless of which program mode (PCB or Schematic) you are using. It actually makes senseafter the second or third week!I really like the schematic editors methods for handling bus connections. You name abus by giving it a text name, and then to give it a width. For example, PORTA0.7defines a buss called PORTA with 8 lines.
PORTA0,PORTA1.,PORTA7 and so on. You can evendefine a bus with different subscripts. PORTAD8.15 will define PORTAD8.,PORTAD15 forexample.
Wiring to a bus is a breeze since when you attach any connection to the bus, itputs up a little popup with all of the pins. You can select one with the mouse, and youare connected.As you are editing your schematic, you can click a single button on the UI to get intothe PCB editor. The PCB editor is pretty nice. The programs are linked, so as you makechanges to your schematic, they are reflected in the PCB.
This is quite handy. Otherprograms often require you to manually export the netlist, and start up the PCB program ina seperate session.The UI between the two programs is fairly similar, and based on several toolbars andmenus. Both programs suffer from the same quirky UI problems, meaning they don't operatelike you would sometimes expect. Still, it is a fairly efficient setup.The Autorouter in Eagle is awesome. I have thrown some really ugly problems at it, andhave seen it do some amazing feats of magic.
Eagle uses a ripup router. That means that ifa previously routed trace is in the way, it will rip that track up and move it elsewhereif needed. The other common autorouter type is a grid router. A grid router usuallyinsures that traces on the top are horizontal, and traces on the bottom are vertical. Ifsomething gets in the way, it will usually place a VIA for the direction change.
Anyway,suffice it to say, this router is extremly impressive, especially in such a relatively lowcost scenario. The Not So Good Stuff:The user interface is a little funky at times, as it doesn't follow the standardWindows guidelines. For example, when you try to do something like a Edit.Cut operation,you will get surprised that the object has only been copied to the clipboard, and not cutfrom the program. The methods of selecting objects takes some experimentation, and isn'tconsistent through the different program modules.The Eagle package has a very powerful built in scripting language.
This language allowsthe user to write little scripts to do complex tasks. This could be seen as a good thing.However, there are many simple day to day tasks that the UI doesn't provide ways of doing,such as copying a device from one library to another. The vendors solution to this is foryou to write a script to solve this problem. The scripting language has access to theentire library database, which is good.
Having a CAD program that I need to write programsfor to do simple tasks isn't good. Still, I suppose it is barely better than nothing!The other problem area I ran into was the grid definitions. Many of the parts in thelibraries are defined in metric units.
If you are mixing and matching metric and imperialparts, the program sometimes won't let you connect things. The Cadsoft solution is, ofcourse, for you to write a User Language Program (ULP) to fix this problem on your own.Luckily, there are several of these in the online help forum. However, it is a pain in thebutt, and something I think they can fix in the software. The Bad StuffThe library management and browsing situation really stink with Eagle, which is the oneof the few reasons I have for not actually purchasing the program yet. They have a longlist of libraries, with lots of cool parts, but the only way to browse through theselibaries are to load them, then load each individual part. This is the grope and pokemethod of searching, and it is a terrible thing to have to put up with in an otherwisecool program.
Managing your libaries is also painful. If you want, for example, to copy adevice from one library to another, you have to cut (which means copy!) the package to theclipboard, close the current library, open the destination library, create the newpackage, paste the information from the clipboard.
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Then, you need to repeat those stepsfor the symbol. Finally, you have to reassociate all of the pins of your package andsymbol, one at a time, to make the duplicate device in the new library. You would have totry this once or twice to see just how ugly this really is!The lack of browsing ability and the lack of management are only surpassed by the utterlack of useful documentation! The online help is barely helpful. If you hit the help key,it will show you the scripting language function closest to what it thinks you were tryingto do. However, it doesn't explain how to do things using the UI.
Its a very poorlydocumented yet extremely complex program.One word of caution: Never work on the schematic or the board layout without openingboth files. You will be forever screwed if you make changes on one side but not the other.I have found the program has difficulties reconciling the changes at a later date, andseems to be prone to generating additional wiring errors.
Vendor SupportOne strong point about Eagle is their support forums. They have several newsgroups thatare dedicated to helping people, and they have at least two people who answer a lot ofquestions on the net. I will give them a big thumbs up on the support department. Theyhave kept all of the posts for the last year or so. I was able to find answers to many ofmy questions by spending 4 hours reading through many many articles. A Summary of EagleI love it, I hate it, I might be able to live with it.
I have about 120 hours intoEagle, learning and trying things out. The Cadsoft folks are promising the librarymanagement problems are the focus of version 4.0 of this program. Anything they do will bebetter than what the have, so I am anxious to see the improvements. However, I have alsobeen waiting for nearly 18 months, and they still don't have a ship date in mind!Versions of Eagle are available for Windows and Linux.
I found the Linux version to berather unstable. (Perhaps it is just me, but I found that the program had some irritatingquirks when run on X-Windows. I don't really care for X anyway, so I may be biased.) Thereis even an old DOS version still being maintained.
If you are evaluating PCB programs, youshould put Eagle on your list.If I had to choose one today, I think I would go with Eagle. IVEX WinDraft and WinBoardCost: $400 + $1000 for AutorouterI have been kicking the tires on IVEX for a couple of years. It looked promising, but Ihave some issues with it. I might recommend you try it for yourself. It has some nicefeatures, but I have had some reliability problems. On my Windows/NT machine, it crashesnow and then. Nothing repeatable, but always when I have just done an hours worth of work!Anyway, it has a decent set of functions.
The General:If I had to guess, I would be willing to guess that the IVEX program started out as aset of smaller programs under DOS. This is one of those programs that still shows itsheritage in the way it operates. It still has a habit of wanting you to run batchoperations on your data. For example, it has a seperate Annotation feature.
That meanswhen you run the Annotation feature, it will search for parts with a? In the name, andassign numbers automatically. Useful feature, but having a seperate batch style utilitymakes an extra set of steps.WinDraft (Schematic program) and WinBoard (PCB program) are seperate programs.Following the batch processing theory, to get the schematic into WinBoard, you have toinvoke a utility program in WinDraft to export a NETLIST file. Then, in WinBoard, you haveto load the netlist manually. This is the old way, it works, but it is kind of clumsy.WinDraft has a built in SPICE simulator. This is a feature that I currently don'treally care about.
However, it turns out that many of the software packages I haveevaluated during this process are focused on their schematic programs ability to do SPICEsims. I would prefer they spent time getting the programs to run flawlessly, but I may notbe reflecting the general market. The Good Stuff:The editor windows look somewhat the same, but you can tell these are differentprograms. Each behave slightly differently.
The WinBoard module editor (library editor) isdifferent from the Windraft editor. The associations are done in the netlist format. InWinDraft, you create a symbol, and assign it a package name and a library name. When thenetlist is output, this information tells the PCB program where to find the package. Thisworks alright. The library browser in both programs gives you the ability to select thelibrary file, specific part, then shows you a preview of the part you are considering.This is a nice touch, and very useful. I like the way both programs use a similar UI forthis.The program puts up a rather useful toolbar on the screen which contains a set of oftenused parts.
This is a happy feature, since I can load it up with my favorite parts.I wish other programs did the same.I found the library editors in both programs to be adequate. They operated well, wereeasy to figure out, and allowed me to work quickly to get the job done. The Not So Good Stuff:There does appear to be a few small issues with both IVEX programs. The UI doesn't seemto have much fit and finish work. For example, the program occasionally won't allow me toresize the current window.
It also has an irritating habit of throwing up a text basedoutput window that I then have to close to get out of my way. This happens after doingsomething like outputting a netlist, doing a design rule check, etc. These are the thingsthat show that this was once a DOS program!I am also not wild about the number of intermediate steps I have to take to do somethings. Having to annotate, output netlists, load netlists, and generally fuss around withcertain areas of the program left me not wanting to make it my primary program.In the fit and finish area, there are a number of things that make the schematics lookodd. For example, the size differences between the part traces and the wire traces.
Theprogram also puts the text for the parts in funny positions. Often times trying to grabthe text to move it doesn't work well, and takes extra time to deal with.I don't like the gerber output functions. I found this to be lacking compared to Eagle,which has a good set of gerber generation features. For example, I have to go select eachlayer individually, plot it, then go back. In Eagle and some of the others, these are donein a batch mode. Much faster.The autorouter is not included with this package, so I didn't get a chance to try it. Idon't think I would spent the $1000 on it either since the Eagle program comes with a verypowerful one for much less.
The Bad StuffI have had numerous crashes with IVEX. They are not occuring in a regular orpredictable way, which means working around crashes like this can be a real issue. I hadsent email to the company for support, and they sent back a canned reply suggesting it wasmy video driver. They did this without even looking into the bug report, which means theymay or may not actually even look at their bugs. The crash address was smack in the middleof their code. They are picking up a pointer, which ended up being NULL, and readingsomething at pointer +4 bytes.
After my reply mail telling them that Windows/NT videodrivers don't crash like this, and that it was in their app, they promised to have adeveloper look.The crashes are not always at the same address, which also has me a bit concerned.After working on a libary part for almost an hour, I was not ready to start over just yet! Vendor SupportThe jury is still out on their support. I wasn't too impressed with the second contact.The first contact was last year when I was asking some how-to questions. I did getreasonable answers at the time, so I am hoping that this latest incident was just an errorin judgement on behalf of the support engineer. He did agree that the problem could indeedbe in the program, so he wasn't completely dodging the issue.The website does list their current bug list. They don't have too many ugly ones, butthere are a few. I am glad to see this list.
Most vendors would not do this.Their other support areas are fairly small, and the parts libraries are OK, but notvery extensive. A Summary of IVEXI kind of like this program, and have invested well over 40 hours learning how to useit.
This may very well be a good program for you, though I have decided that Eagle mightbe a better choice for me. IVEX can be pretty expensive. They currently have it 'on sale'for $400 for the pair of programs plus a gerber file viewer. This is for a 650 pin limitedversion. A 650 pin board is fairly good sized. However, it gets really expensive afterthat, and you still don't get the autorouter! Microcode Circuit Maker 2000Cost: $395 for Standard, $995 for ProfessionalMicrocode recently updated their Traxmaker and Circuitmaker programs into asingle entity called CircuitMaker 2000.
Unfortunately, this just happened, and they nolonger supply the two programs I spent time with. However, I will tell you about theprevious versions. I hope this information is going to apply to the new programs as well!Circuitmaker is a schematic layout program that I didn't care too much for.
The matingprogram, Traxmaker, is something I use quite a bit since it is the Windows version of DOSProtel. It is capable of reading Autotrax schematics, and does a better job outputting thevarious layers from that program. I am told that Microcode bought the Autotrax franchisefrom Protel and continued developing it while Protel headed off in another direction. Thatwas in about 1990 or so.
Then, in 1998, Protel bought Microcode. So, CircuitMaker is adivision of Protel again! The Good Stuff:Traxmaker is a straight forward PCB layout program. It has a fairly functional set ofcapabilities for placing parts, routing signals, and the autorouter works OK for manypurposes. It isn't quite a glitzy as the others, but it gets the job done. It also had anice UI for dealing with gerber output files, allowing you to do the entire batch of filesfrom one screen. Some of the features are a little odd, but I use the 'demo' version ofthis program quite a bit.
This program can read Autotrax files (DOS version from Protel).For a low end program, it works very well. The Not So Good Stuff:Circuitmaker is setup to be a simulation/schematic capture program. Therefore, theyspent a great deal of time working on the simulation area at the expense of the schematiccapture area. I really didn't care much for the UI in Circuitmaker. I found it to beclumsy to use, and the visual details of the schematics generated didn't appeal to me atall.
However, I was able to play around with the simulator on a few small circuits, and itlooked pretty interesting. I don't do much with analog, and none of the parts I wouldtypically use have SPICE models, so the feature is very low on my list of features. The Bad Stuff:Well, the demo versions I downloaded didn't give me any warm fuzzies. The Circuitmakerprogram was limited in its ability, and the libraries didn't excite me at all.
I wasreally hoping to find a program that had libraries I would find useful. This wasn't it.The Traxmaker program was fully functional, except that I couldn't save anything. Nobiggie, I was still able to get a good feel for the program. I liked the way it operated.I would have purchased Traxmaker, except it didn't integrate with any other schematicprograms but Circuitmaker, which I didn't care for. A Summary of CircuitmakerYou might like to download their demo version (when the new one becomes available).
Iwould hope that the integration is improved, and perhaps the functionality of the programhas improved.A Summary of the 'Others'There are quite a few other programs that I have tried, but didn't like well enough tobother with a review. However, I will mention them in summary form so you can evaluatethem for yourself: Protel '98I have a demo version of Protel '98 that looked impressive, and costs about $5000 forthe real thing. To be honest, the program crashed about every 10 minutes while I wasexperimenting. Granted, I was doing things that the designers probably never thought totest, but the frequency of the crashes was a true disappointment. The program is a fullfeatured electronic design assistant, including schematic, PCB layout, PLD compiler,autorouter, and a bunch of other features that I don't understand.
It also doessimulation. You can get a demo CD from them at. Interesting to play with, too much money for me. Electronics WorkbenchThey didn't have a downloadable demo of their current version. I have played with theprevious versions. This is gear more towards simulation than PCB design. I didn't like thelibrary selection, nor did I care much for the limited functionality of the schematicprogram or the PCB program.
The latest version, called Ultiboard, doesn't peak my interestenought to try. The 'demo' version is really a canned set of screen shots. They don't letyou try the program out first, which I don't like and won't support. They also have poorlibrary support. They claim to provide over 6000 library parts. However, they list eachvalue of resistor as 1 part each.
There are about 100 resistor values, 100 capacitorvalues, several hundred diodes, etc. You get the picture: no bang for the buck.
Theprogram costs $400 for the PCB program, $400 for the Multisim program, and $400 for theautorouter.Mental Automation SuperCad / SuperPCBI wasn't impressed much with Mental Automation. Perhaps you might be: In ConclusionAs much as I hate the program, Eagle is the current winner of the contest. As I statedbefore, I still am not impressed enough to plunk down any hard cash, but I am watching forsigns of improvement.
I do like the companys helpful attitude towards its users, and hopethey will be able to pull off a great new version with their upcoming v4.0 update.
How to solve problems with IVEX files. Associate the IVEX file extension with the correct application. On:Windows: Right click on any IVEX file and then click 'Open with' 'Choose another app'. Now select another program and check the box 'Always use this app to open.IVEX files'. Mac: Right click (or Ctrl-click) the IVEX file, then click 'Open with' 'Other.' Then choose another program and check the 'Always Open With' box. Linux: Right click on the file, and select 'Open with' and choose another program.
IPhone: Tap the file. If you do not see an app to open the file, then tap Share 'Share' and choose an app. Alternatively, save the file.
Then open the Files app Files app. There long-press on the file, then release your finger. You will see a black menu bar. Then tap 'Share' and select an app.
Android: Tap the Settings icon on your smartphone, then tap on the Apps section. There tap the Options icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen to change the default apps. Update your software that should actually open.IVEX is Worldviz Vizard encrypted data. Because only the current version supports the latest IVEX file format.Search, therefore, e.g. On the Worldviz manufacturer website after an available.IVEX is Worldviz Vizard encrypted data update.
To make sure that your IVEX file is not corrupted or virus-infected, get the file again and scan it with antivirus software.
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