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Larry Joy
-----Original Message----- 
From: Steve Gregory
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2015 12:31 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

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