Circuit board design software also known as PCB design software is an essence in today's electronic design automation. With rapidly growing electronic industry and competitive market all electronic manufacturing companies relies on best circuit board design software.
What are the common circuit board design software? Which one is the best? Which should I use? Which is easy to learn? are some of the question many new comers ask today. These are important question.
Some of these question will be partially answered here and providing some guidance to new comers. There are over 50 EDA, free and proprietary that does PCB design and a complete list can be found in Wikipedia. Having said that below are names of commonly used and widely known circuit board software on which will be commented.
Cadence Orcad/Allegro is perhaps the most popular, widely accepted PCB design software. It has wide range of feature. Cadence is integrated tool comprised of Orcad capture, Pspice and Allegro. Orcad capture is the schematic design tool, Pspice is the underlying simulation simulator and Allegro is the PCB design tool.
It is much matured and older circuit board design software. This means that tutorials, circuit designs, component footprints, schematic pars etc availability is much more making this software easier to learn in this regard. Extra features and tools like FPGA codesign, export/import and translator to other EDA, signal explorer, planner and architect, model integrity tools for creating IBIS model and other tools are available with this software. Thus it is a complete circuit board design software.
The drawback of this software maybe that it is comparatively little bit harder to learn than altium designer or proteus professional. 3D view of component with rotation and zoom view is not supported as in Altium Designer but provides 2D view. Another difference would be that of schematic editor window, the pcb design window, library editor opens in a separate window unlike in Altium designer in which schematic, pcb editor, library editor opens in same but new tabs making it a little bit easy(a relative view) to navigate between them. The zoom in/out feature of altium designer is better with mouse scrolling to different parts in schematic and pcb layout.
Altium designer like cadence also supports all tools required for designing a circuit board. Perhaps it is easier to understand then Cadence. The 3D model view of parts makes it easy for designer to create an image of what and how the final design will look like. The integrated library feature that ties up component schematic part, library part, simulation part, signal integrity and simulation part makes it easy for users to refer the component and removes the requirement to locate and browse the different parts files. Creating schematic part, footprint may also be easier than with cadence. Again the underlying simulator is a variant of spice. The work process of transfer from schematic to PCB is easier than Cadence. The placement of parts during the PCB board design is also easier. However perhaps the auto routing feature is not as useful as in Cadence.
Proteus Professional is much lighter PCB design software. The ISIS is for schematic design, the ARES for PCB design and VMS for microprocessor and FPGA based projects. The power and distinguishing feature of Proteus comes from interactive simulation, debugging with micro-controllers and microprocessors. This is very useful in projects with microprocessor and microcontroller based projects. Another feature of proteus is the visual indicator that guides designer in schematic wiring and pcb layout.
What are the common circuit board design software? Which one is the best? Which should I use? Which is easy to learn? are some of the question many new comers ask today. These are important question.
Some of these question will be partially answered here and providing some guidance to new comers. There are over 50 EDA, free and proprietary that does PCB design and a complete list can be found in Wikipedia. Having said that below are names of commonly used and widely known circuit board software on which will be commented.
- Cadence
- Mentor Graphics
- Altium designer
- Proteus Professional
- Eagle
Cadence Orcad/Allegro is perhaps the most popular, widely accepted PCB design software. It has wide range of feature. Cadence is integrated tool comprised of Orcad capture, Pspice and Allegro. Orcad capture is the schematic design tool, Pspice is the underlying simulation simulator and Allegro is the PCB design tool.
It is much matured and older circuit board design software. This means that tutorials, circuit designs, component footprints, schematic pars etc availability is much more making this software easier to learn in this regard. Extra features and tools like FPGA codesign, export/import and translator to other EDA, signal explorer, planner and architect, model integrity tools for creating IBIS model and other tools are available with this software. Thus it is a complete circuit board design software.
The drawback of this software maybe that it is comparatively little bit harder to learn than altium designer or proteus professional. 3D view of component with rotation and zoom view is not supported as in Altium Designer but provides 2D view. Another difference would be that of schematic editor window, the pcb design window, library editor opens in a separate window unlike in Altium designer in which schematic, pcb editor, library editor opens in same but new tabs making it a little bit easy(a relative view) to navigate between them. The zoom in/out feature of altium designer is better with mouse scrolling to different parts in schematic and pcb layout.
Altium designer like cadence also supports all tools required for designing a circuit board. Perhaps it is easier to understand then Cadence. The 3D model view of parts makes it easy for designer to create an image of what and how the final design will look like. The integrated library feature that ties up component schematic part, library part, simulation part, signal integrity and simulation part makes it easy for users to refer the component and removes the requirement to locate and browse the different parts files. Creating schematic part, footprint may also be easier than with cadence. Again the underlying simulator is a variant of spice. The work process of transfer from schematic to PCB is easier than Cadence. The placement of parts during the PCB board design is also easier. However perhaps the auto routing feature is not as useful as in Cadence.
Proteus Professional is much lighter PCB design software. The ISIS is for schematic design, the ARES for PCB design and VMS for microprocessor and FPGA based projects. The power and distinguishing feature of Proteus comes from interactive simulation, debugging with micro-controllers and microprocessors. This is very useful in projects with microprocessor and microcontroller based projects. Another feature of proteus is the visual indicator that guides designer in schematic wiring and pcb layout.
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