<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">The online Kicad Tutorials you can find with Google are very helpful.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">The main trick is to realize that the components in the schematic need a pad layout associated with each of them that matches your parts, and that is all that, in the end, matters.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Try not to get too fancy to start with.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Start with through hole parts, there are lots of DIP footprints and any part with the same number of pins as yours will work in the schematic.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">the SIP footprints work fine for through hole resistors and capacitors if you cannot find the correct part or footprint. You just need holes in the board!</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Once you get going you may want to learn about the design rule checker and get fancy with making the parts in the schematic and layout tailored to your actual parts. This will enable you to reduce errors in the designs to near zero. But it is often faster to make a board quickly and fix the errors with wire and solder later, than learn all the error checking tools to start out. I call it board surgery and it works well for development, particularly if you resist the urge to get the pretty colored solder mask painted over all your traces.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">But be assured Kicad is a very nice full featured tool. Once you get used to it you can produce complex error free boards. The only feature it does not support that I notice is back annotation of simulation results to the schematic (unless that has been added and I missed it!).</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Carl Nobile <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:carl.nobile@gmail.com" target="_blank">carl.nobile@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Jose,<div><br></div><div>If you are not looking to market this controller then you can still use Eagle. It only cost money if you need it in a real production environment. The learning curve on KiCad is a little more steep than Eagle, but it is free and has no limits. I have both installed on my Linux machine and try to use KiCad for new designs and Eagle when I need to see somebody else's design that uses Eagle. I'm not real good on either, but hey we're here to learn.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Carl</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Bill Farrow <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bill@arrowsreach.com" target="_blank">bill@arrowsreach.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:09 AM, Jose Medrano <<a href="mailto:jamedran@ncsu.edu" target="_blank">jamedran@ncsu.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
> is...Eagle is about an order of magnitude higher than what I can pay right<br>
> now. Do you all have any suggestions for other good PCB software?<br>
<br>
</div>Have you tried the Open Source KiCad ?<br>
<a href="http://www.kicad-pcb.org/" target="_blank">http://www.kicad-pcb.org/</a><br>
<br>
Bill<br>
<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><br>Martin Brooke<div><br></div><div>-- <br> <table border="1"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="CENTER"><b><font size="+1">Martin Brooke</font></b> <br>
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