Protel Pcb Design Software Free For Windows 7
Austin Vermont
ThemeRoller allows you to edit all of the elements of the Voyager user interface and enables you to immediately see the changes you have made. The preview will not show your Voyager contents, but rather an example display with various elements which can appear in the app.
Drag & drop a color-icon from the above color selection to an element in the example view. To do so, click on a color and keep the left mouse key depressed until you have moved the pointer to an element which you would like to color. As soon as you release the mouse key...
After you have made all of your settings, upload them to the protel Cloud. Unlike the usual protel Cloud Center dialog boxes, the design adjustments need to be saved manually. Since it is very useful to try out the different variations with these settings, all of the adjustments you make will remain offline until you are satisfied with the design and want to publish it.
Hello All.
I apologize if this belongs on a different forum.
I regularly recommend Allegro+OrCAD CIS to my clients and customers and so far I've had very high acceptance / adoption.
However, I am currently being asked to defend replacing a company's toolset from basic level PADS to Allegro. The in-house designer thinks Allegro is crap and after 10 minutes of use he stormed in to see me and told me I was full of it.
He asked "what does Allegro do that PADS doesn't? Every I see takes longer to do in Allegro"
I have seen lots of nits in my own perusal of PADS but I am asking those who have successfully used both tools to chime in as to pros and cons.
Thanks,
Bill
Hi Bill,
I'm an old Pads hand, and saw it's progression from the days of DOS to Windows on PowerPCB. It's an adequate tool. It does get the job done.
But the capacity built into Allegro is hands down, far and away, orders of magnitude more powerful than PowerPCB. Ease of use aside, as both tools have their pros and cons, Allegro has WAY more flexibility and depth.
[caveat; I've been using Allegro solely for the last 5 years and haven't seen the latest developments in PowerPCB, so they may have improved things; like, remove the maximum 20 or so routing layer limit; improved the padstack editor; etc.]
As far as task time goes, initially, the user will buck at using Allegro, because it seems it takes longer to do everything (designers can be that way when faced with change...). Of course if you have the patience to get over the steeper learning curve, things improve dramatically. At least they have for me.
You will also have all the library conversion issues to contend with, as well legacy database conversion if you want to go all the way. That's another issue altogether. Will be happy to chat about it offline if you've found this helpful.
Thanks
Andrew
Andrew Noonan
CAE, PCB Design
Cisco Systems, Inc.
225 East Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134 USA
Direct: 408.853-7785
anno...@cisco.com
www.cisco.com
Don't use Pads, use Altium Designer ....
Altium Designer is the old 'protel' brand... it has come on leaps and bounds in the last 5 years, eg, the rules set. You can have any rule from any item to any other item quickly and simply.. in minutes
The cost of Pads, the technology of Allegro, only with common sense thrown in. It has a learning curve akin to climbing a small mound rather that the peak of everest!!
Cadstar, Pads & AD can do 99.9% of what Allegro does and can do it in a fraction of the time... Allegro IMHO is not finacially viable & anyone who says it is maybe just trying to justify their own finacial decisions/disasters!
Our cost of one seat of AD is half the price of the yearly maintenance on one seat of Allegro ... people seem to want to justify Allegro's price for the fact it does this that & the other... well woopee dooo ... so do the others!
As far as a bureau tool.. Allegro is just plain awfull.....
**rant over**
btw 25 yrs experience with Cadstar, Pads, AD & Allegro....
Howdy,
>> the technology of Allegro
This statement is nowhere near accurate if [A]ltium [D]esigner is the reference. Length matching, XNETS, diff pairs, keep-out definitions, no subclasses which relates to gerber files and printing for assembly & fab drawings, and reviews.
>> Cadstar, Pads & AD can do 99.9% of what Allegro does
maybe all three of them put together.., but I do not yet know Cadstar and am only vaguely familiar with Pads.
>> it in a fraction of the time
is not possible with AD. AD's online DRC implementation alone adds a long wait time which greatly reduces productivity and this reduction is exponential with board size. The online DRC can be turned of but there is an "Analyzing [every single net]" that AD performs when a connection is made that is also an exponential time hog that cannot be turned off.
Comparatively, AD has more than its fair share of serious bugs and the not-so-serious ones are too many to count. There seem to be work-arounds for everything with AD and I believe that is why so many of its flaws have propogated for so long to the current version. Another disconcerting factor is that AD breaks at least ten times more of its features than Allegro does when a new version is released and there is no switch to allow any of the previous version's command behavior in a newer version of AD.
A proficient Allegro user may find difficulties learning Altium even with the more friendly interface.
Scripts with Altium are not like scripts with Allegro but more like Allegro's skill files where an understanding of programming languages is a must.
I admit there are some really advantageous features with Altium and that if you are on your own with limited funds AD is really not a bad way to go. I do recommend adding AD to your arsenal if funds and time allow as it has been a relatively easy adaptation for me.
But,
I find it hard to believe that Pads would not be a better alternative than Altium.
However, when and if I find myself on my own again, I will currently pay for an Altium license and use the profits to get back to Allegro because I do not yet know Pads.
My point is that I believe Altium to Allegro is like taking surface streets instead of the freeways. Maybe the same could be said for Pads to Allegro...
Cheers!
Drew
Umm ..
Interesting Drew & I respect your opinion. I guess its a case of favouring what you know best. Sure AD has a few bugs as any piece of software does, but certainly no showstoppers....
My biggest problem is that I do not know Allegro well enough to give a constructive opinion, its the learning curve and unfriendlyness of it all that to me seems so uneccassary, and to a point Cadence have shot themselves in the foot as it makes it an unviable system to learn when your getting pressured by the MD to go 'faster faster' !!
Autotrax is a freeware PCB CAD package written by Protel in the early 1990's (See image, right). Autotrax is capable of producing 6-8 layer boards (see image below) and reasonably fine geometries. The file format is simple - which has resulted in many engineers open-sourcing tools to support Autotrax. (See resources list) Most PCB manufacturers can import the Protel Autotrax format if you ask them, in our experience. Autotrax can be used to produce PCBs with Non-plated holes, complex routed shapes (internal to PCB and external contour), non-solder masked copper, and for panellising multiple PCBs for manufacture. Autotrax is easy to drive with mouse, menu or keyboard commands. Library components (new part footprints) are easy to generate in Autotrax.
It produces good qualitysingle sided anddouble sidedPCBs, and does reasonably well atMultilayerprovided you do not needburied vias or exceptionallyfine geometries.Autotrax is free.The file format is reasonably easy to manipulate, and people have written tools that provice special featuressuch as circular arrays of pads, bitmap to tracks (great for logos), PCB to bitmap.As Autotrax runs under Dosbox it is by default portable to any operating system.
The main advantage of Protel Autotrax is it quite capable of completing 95% of thePCB design work (my estimate) done today - and it is simple, fast, and free. The other5% is the complex stuff - if you are using large pin BGAs and you don't wince at$2000 prototypes, you should probably be using the latest product fromMentor Graphics. Protel Easytrax
The little brother
For many years Autotrax was the paid-for version, and the free version was called Easytrax. Autotrax outperforms Easytrax, the files are pretty much upwards compatible - just change the first line of an Easytrax file from "PCB FILE 5" to "PCB FILE 4" and it will import. Easytrax limited choices for track sizes and hole sizes - but this is not much of an issue for those etching and drilling their own boards. Autotrax's ShortfallsAutotrax has had its name usurped by UK Kovacs,who makes the PCB package "AutoTRAX DEX 2020". This is not compatible with ProtelAutotrax, although it is alsonot an expensive package(I mean that in a positive sense)and may be worth considering for new PCB designers. Having two packages with thesame name is confusing.
Autotrax is not able to do all the finer operations of newerCAD packages -such as autorouting (it does this, but not well), automaticimpedance matching,[2],Trace length equalization.There are workarounds to achieve many of the extra features that are sometimes neededbut not directly supported - such ascomponents rotatedby other than 90/180/270 degrees,tented vias, amechanical drawing layer, andnon-plated holes.Autotrax does not produceRS-274X format gerber files, so gerber filetranslation must be achieved with third party tools. Autotrax does not haveintegrated schematic capture ( = circuit design), or simulation so this must be doneby another package. Autotrax was originally sold with Protel Schedit V3.31 for thisfunction. Autotrax does support all the functions required to integratewith a schematic package, includingnetlists,rubber banding,automatic component import based on a netlist,progress through a netlist (using theautorouters preroute) anddesign rule checks.
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