I have not found a good forum for PCB designers--there's one or two, but I'm not on them.  I stick with Altium (not a cheap software package), as that's what I use at the company I work at.  I tried Eagle on my own years ago, and it was just too... different for me.  I'm sure it has come a long ways, and you, as a new user, would not have the hangups that I'd run into.  I'd think there would be an Eagle users forum someplace to help out a new person.  Eagle has been around for a while, and seems to have a following.

There is some low cost PCB fab house which has their own software for making PCB's.  Presumably it's a proprietary format, so you are stuck ordering through them; but since it's geared towards the low-cost hobby market, I am guessing the tool is low-feature / easy to use.  That might a possibility.

One thing to watch out for: PCB designers don't use clearance and creepage the same way as others do.  It is because on the PCB stuff is measured for its... clearance from other things.

Shawn Upton
Section Head, Test Engineering
Sensors Business Unit
Allegro MicroSystems, LLC
[log in to unmask]
603.626.2429/fax: 603.641.5336


-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Gregory
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2015 12:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Process guy looking to start trying to do board layout...

Hi All,

Many of you know me, and know that most of my career has been a hands-on, out on the production floor kind of process guy , but now I'm looking at trying to do board layout.

Yeah, yeah I know, forget about it. But I'm not looking to do anything complicated, it's a small 1" X 2.85", 2-layer board with 3-LED's, a through-hole right angle push button switch, 5-holes that a little wire harness can be soldered into, and two mounting holes.

I've often thought about learning more about board design and layout, but my plate always fills up with the day-to-day production and process issues so I wind up pushing that off to the back burner and don't think about it again for a while. So now the idea has popped up again. The story is that we build this little board for a customer and now they want to change the size and layout and use a different switch. So my boss asks me if this is something I can do, we don't have any design guys here. I have Pentalogix ViewMate Deluxe and do gerber edits to apertures in the solder paste layers for the stencils I buy, but don't really change the layout of boards, ViewMate is not meant for that. I explain that to him and he asks if he bought the software would this be something that I would be interested in doing, so now the opportunity has presented itself again.

So I've been looking around and I'm not looking the buy a seat at a full-blown CAD station, just something inexpensive and simple to use. So I've been looking at Eagle, and my question is, have any of you used this?
Is this software a good starting point for a rookie like me? I know there is an IPC Designers Council forum, but those guys are so far ahead of me that I don't want to waste their time. Any feedback is welcome.

Steve

-- 


This email and any attachments are only for use by the intended
recipient(s) and may contain legally privileged, confidential, proprietary or otherwise private information. Any unauthorized use, reproduction, dissemination, distribution or other disclosure of the contents of this e-mail or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. 


______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service.
For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service.
For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] 
______________________________________________________________________