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Protel is not a good tool. It is easy to learn, not easy to design PCB. For example, if you move a line, you must move it's peripheral lines by your hand.
If you plan to do any high speed design, you will need a more professional tool such as 'Cadstar'.
You need a tool that can handle net attributes and constrainst, and do high speed routing by length or delay and differential pair routing. It does simulation, but not of the circuit function, but of the signal integrity, resolving crosstalk and reflections. I would not say it's the best, but the best is very expensive. It's a lot more sofisticated than most.
protel is a good program for small designs and also it is easy to learn but protel's autoroute is not good. autoroute of orcad layout is better than protel.
I think pr0tel is no bad, but 0rc@d is better. Good schematic tool and nice router, with cool feature automatic jumper placement. I think 0rc@d is best one for any design types
I think pr0tel is no bad, but 0rc@d is better. Good schematic tool and nice router, with cool feature automatic jumper placement. I think 0rc@d is best one for any design types
Hi,
I think PR0TEL DXP is good if you are a beginner.
Because when you want to create a good PCB you have to make the best set up and configure in your software otherwise you will have a bad board that isn't efficient.
with it you can do easy set up and configure for auto route.
See the picture:
Regards
Protel 99SE is much easier to use than Orcad (it doesn't contrstrain you as much as the Orcad offering). The only real problem is that Protel for some unknown reason stopped development on what was a decent program (99SE with all it's service packs) and brought out DXP, which seems to be a complete rewrite with a differing user interface.
I've tried to use this "upgrade " but the disadvantages (it's much slower than 99SE on equivalent hardware) outweigh the advantages in my opinion.
I'm a bit surprised at the positive comments about Pr*tel here? I've used various Eagle products along with Pr*tel 99SE and for the last year, Pr*tel DXP. I can tell you both have many many problems and Pr*tel is very slow to fix them despite many of their customers complaining loudly (just get access to their forum mailing list--there's a reason they delete most of the history in the online forum--much of it is very negative).
While DXP addresses, from a marketing perspective, a lot of weaknesses in 99SE, it has even more annoying bugs. Many users on the forum don't consider it a usable product and are still using 99SE. SP3 was supposed to be delivered 6 months ago and has yet to be released. For many users, me included, the SP2 version frequently crashes hard and has to be unloaded with the task manager or by re-booting. You lose your work sometimes. It behaves more like a beta.
Equally frustrating are things like moving a room on the PCB and having DXP randomly leave behind dozens of vias and tracks. The autoplacer is worthless and heaven help you if your board gets far out of sync with the schematic.
I realize that no package is perfect, but while Pr*tel products look good on the surface, the more you use them, the more frustrated you become.
By comparison, Eagle isn't as powerful but it's MUCH more stable. It, at least, does what it's designed to do. What's more, the Eagle folks seem genuinely interested in fixing what they have before moving onto new features and products. Pr*tel has a terrible track record at fixing things in a timely fashion. 99SE with SP6 after 4 years still has lots of bugs and then they abandoned it in favor of DXP and a whole new set of even more crippling bugs.
We're now looking at Cadstar as it's similarly priced to DXP but supposedly much more stable. We don't use the simulation in DXP anyway. Ment*or seems to be the high-end but their products are out of our budget. We're certainly not going to give the Pr*tel folks another dime.
The question is:
how much money do you want to spend ?
If U have mach money and have to use HiSpeed CADSTAR or CADENCE are both good !!
Otherwise U can see PULSONIX, a quite new and affordable PCB. Is very stable and on new version U can find Component and Trace Push&shove and for single Layer U can find Jumpers (not present in all products ).
If you ask this question everyone will answer what they like best and you will get confused :?
First you must define what you will design with the tool.
Do you want a SCH=>PCB tool with route checking?
How many components in yous typical design
Do you need simulation
Do you need autoroute. And I mean NEED, not would like.
Do you need 3D
You get the idea.
Once you know what you want to do, you will be better informed to identify the tool you need.
Nest stage is to make a drawing on paper and download the trial softwares for what you identify as possible tools.
Then try and make your paper design 'real' using the tools you are testing.
Keep notes on good and bad things you like.
When finished testing add up the scores and decide.
Just remember, that the software IS just a tool, the engineer is the most important 'tool' in the box.
First you must define what you will design with the tool.
Do you want a SCH=>PCB tool with route checking?
How many components in yous typical design
Do you need simulation
Do you need autoroute. And I mean NEED, not would like.
Do you need 3D
You get the idea.
Once you know what you want to do, you will be better informed to identify the tool you need.
Nest stage is to make a drawing on paper and download the trial softwares for what you identify as possible tools.
Then try and make your paper design 'real' using the tools you are testing.
Keep notes on good and bad things you like.
When finished testing add up the scores and decide.
Just remember, that the software IS just a tool, the engineer is the most important 'tool' in the box. [/quote]
I agree with tool is nothing the engineer is most important, i love to use proteus and it has good pcb tool ares and equiped with good auto router
easy to use what you think about it
I tried many PCB layout programs when I was moving from DOS based
to Windows based applications.
The main concern for me was how much moving about with the mouse I
needed to do, as it can become quite tiresome to ones wrist in the long run.
I settled for Easy-PC from Number One Systems mainly because one
can zoom in and out using the mousewheel. It makes editing a large design
a breeze.
I recommend you to download demo versions from all the vendors and
try them out with your typical type of design. Make a note of the
annoyances because those will be the ones you will be cursing forever...
:roll: If you are designing analog cicuits(power supply, amplifiers ) and you require full manual control of what you are doing use Eagle. freeware version is available www.cadsoft.de
if you are designing digital circuits where you want to use autorouting Pcad,orcad.cadstar etc.. :roll:
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