PCB DESIGN

[woodone]

Anyone on the board that has PCB design know how?
Looking to lay out an adaptor for the new ESU V5 Micro decoder to lower height of decoder.
Need to generate a Gerber File.
Any help- send PM has it might be too long to post here. Give me your e-male and we can trade,thoughts-phone#?

[wvgca]

what are you using for design software, makes a difference ..

[woodone]

I don’t have any PCB software. That is why I am trying to find someone who has and uses a program to do the design.
I did get a low cost program and down loaded it.
But after over 8 hours of trying to make it work I gave up.
I have installs to do so I need to move on.

[railnerd]

There are folks here who have done PCBs.  Big thing is getting details about the connectors and a proposed connection diagram.

[C855B]

I don’t have any PCB software. That is why I am trying to find someone who has and uses a program to do the design.
I did get a low cost program and down loaded it.
But after over 8 hours of trying to make it work I gave up.
...

This is where I ended a project. I have a little bit of PCB design experience, but most recent was with a proprietary app tied to a hobbyist-oriented service bureau with very limited output choices. Anything funky including thinner board sizes and/or machining requires Gerber output, and, like you, the free/cheap apps I could find online with (supposed) Gerber capability were obtuse and useless. One in particular I tried was so wrapped-up in its auto-routing features that it simply wouldn't let you lay traces by hand. Sheesh.

Choices at the moment seem to be just not doing my project, paying four figures or more for pro software, or finding someone I can pay to do a simple circuit, but on a micro-sized board requiring precision machining on very thin substrate. It that last stuff that's the kicker.

[davefoxx]

[thread drift]

Every time I see the title of this thread, I can't help but to think of this:





DFF

[/thread drift]

[woodone]

This is where I ended a project. I have a little bit of PCB design experience, but most recent was with a proprietary app tied to a hobbyist-oriented service bureau with very limited output choices. Anything funky including thinner board sizes and/or machining requires Gerber output, and, like you, the free/cheap apps I could find online with (supposed) Gerber capability were obtuse and useless. One in particular I tried was so wrapped-up in its auto-routing features that it simply wouldn't let you lay traces by hand. Sheesh.

Choices at the moment seem to be just not doing my project, paying four figures or more for pro software, or finding someone I can pay to do a simple circuit, but on a micro-sized board requiring precision machining on very thin substrate. It that last stuff that's the kicker.

Thanks Mike.
This is what was frustrating to me. I can draw to scale what I need but without a Gerber file no one wants to even talk to me. This is a VERY simple  board, two sides and no parts to put on it. 60 pads and 12 traces. Hell I can draw that up. BUT NO I need a Gerber file to summit.
I hope someone can help has I think that this might help some people using the new ESU micro V5 in diesels. 

[mmagliaro]

I have designed simple PC boards using free packages available online before.  I liked the free tool and service I got from 4pcb.com, although as you say, I could not export Gerber files and get somebody else to make the boards.  If I used their tool, I had to pay them to make my boards.  But I found the tool, PCBArtist, very intuitive and easy to use.

But when you posted this, I nosed around and found other tools.
I downloaded a tool from here: https://www.freepcb.com/
It let me draw a simple circuit and write out Gerber files.

Another one I found was: https://fritzing.org/learning/tutorials/designing-pcb/
Also free and also outputs Gerber files.

So either of those might be an option for you.  I will say this, the freepcb.com tool is klunky and took a while to figure out.   I found the fritz tool better.  ( PCBArtist was better, in my opinion, but then, you can't get Gerber files from them, so that doesn't help you). 

[C855B]

Thanks, Max. I used pcbexpress.com (or was it expresspcb.com?) back when I was into designing circuits. It worked great, their service was great, but like 4pcb.com, WYSIWYG as far as board shape(s) and thickness, and little or no machining if you needed a not-rectangular shape or cutouts.

I'll check freepcb and fritzing. If they support routing (the milling kind of routing, not drawing circuit paths, also called "routing") I'll be golden. Then on to the next frustration, finding a board house OK with 0.010 substrate.

EDIT: Neither one will work for me, as they don't support removing PCB material in the middle. Fritzing is better in that it allows importing of custom shapes, just as long as it is one contiguous piece with no voids. Rats!

[reinhardtjh]

KiCad EDS is an up and coming PCB layout tool.  Open Source and available for Mac, Linux and (ugh) Windows..

http://www.kicad-pcb.org/

KiCad is an open source software suite for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). The programs handle Schematic Capture, and PCB Layout with Gerber output. The suite runs on Windows, Linux and macOS and is licensed under GNU GPL v3.

They even have Conferences (KiCon) and everything.   http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2019/04/First-Annual-KiCad-Conference-KiCon-Wrap-Up/

No experience with it.  It's on my to-do list to learn (like a million other things).

[C855B]

KiCad EDS is an up and coming PCB layout tool.  Open Source and available for Mac, Linux and (ugh) Windows..

http://www.kicad-pcb.org/ ...

Unfortunately doesn't run on any OSX previous to Sierra, which is only three years old. Apple sure has the developer community wrapped around their little finger, don't they?

I'll try the Win7 version under BootCamp.

EDIT: I'm impressed (Win7 version)! Smooth UI, relatively intuitive, I wasn't fighting the controls, things seemed logical. Rare achievement these days! Too late tonight this morning to try anything serious, but it certainly has a lot of features and capabilities; many I don't quite understand from being out of the field for a long while and not up on the current processes.

Thanks for the referral and link. Looks like something I can use.

[reinhardtjh]

Unfortunately doesn't run on any OSX previous to Sierra, which is only three years old. Apple sure has the developer community wrapped around their little finger, don't they?

They have two download links for OS/X macOS - one for Mojave (10.14) and the other for El Capitan to High Sierra (10.11 - 10.13)   Does the latter not work for 10.11?  I recently "upgraded" to 10.13 so I can't tell.

[C855B]

The "system requirements" specify 10.12, though there was a notation about "reported to work" under 10.11; I may have read a "10.11 supported through August 2019", inspiring a whole bunch of confidence there.

Anyway, I wasn't even going to try, my main system is 10.10. Like we talked about before, it's going stay that way, as 10.11 breaks apps I can't reasonably upgrade. We can thank the Apple-Adobe-Microsoft cartel for that, as the latter two have moved to the rental model facilitated by Apple's further corrupting the OS environment with each release, intentionally killing backwards compatibility.

Anyway, my usual rant aside, KiCad works great under Win7 so far. I wish other Windows apps were as smooth. Next step, for me, is to try it under Ubuntu once I load it onto one of my spare systems. I have to make that leap sooner or later.

[reinhardtjh]

The "system requirements" specify 10.12, though there was a notation about "reported to work" under 10.11; I may have read a "10.11 supported through August 2019", inspiring a whole bunch of confidence there.

Okay, I see it...  10.11 through 9/2019, 10.12 - 2020, 10.13 - 2021  Ugh.

Linux is a little better.  Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS) through 2023

Anyway, I wasn't even going to try, my main system is 10.10. Like we talked about before, it's going stay that way, as 10.11 breaks apps I can't reasonably upgrade. We can thank the Apple-Adobe-Microsoft cartel for that, as the latter two have moved to the rental model facilitated by Apple's further corrupting the OS environment with each release, intentionally killing backwards compatibility.

Yeah, I couldn't remember if you were at 10.10 or 10.11...

Probably time to build an Ubuntu desktop.  Got lots of CLI-based servers.

[C855B]

And if you recall, we reloaded 10.9 on my server because Apple was already deprecating OSX Server support with 10.10. Both machines have bootable clone backups now, every night, plus Time Machine for the incrementals. But, still, Ubuntu is somewhat familiar territory having built a few servers with it seven or eight years ago. So I need to practice what I preach and nudge OSX out wherever I can. It's mostly a matter of apps and compatibility with 35 years' accumulation of Mac files of widely variable importance. 

And you think all of this is bad, Robyn is still at 10.4 on a G4 mini, although when she wants to see a website that breaks on her ancient Firefox she has an iPad2 (about which I caution her daily due to all the trackers, etc., that come with iOS). Anyway, it's not going to be a fun time around here when she gets a RaspPi 4 this fall to replace that creaky old mini.