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Printed circuit board drawing program. Folder Design of circuits and printed circuit boards

Sprint-Layout
The program with a simple and intuitive interface is designed for the design of printed circuit boards of low complexity. Used by radio electronics enthusiasts when creating boards for electronic devices to automate the design process.


Eagle
A popular computer program specially created for beginners and radio electronics enthusiasts. Allows you to draw electrical circuit diagrams and printed circuit boards of no more than average complexity.



The domestic Russian-language program is intended for both professionals and radio amateurs. Used to create boards manually or automatically. Distributed in 2 versions - free (with restrictions) and paid.



A free, easy-to-learn and operate program designed for manual design of circuit boards of low to medium complexity. In addition to the built-in library of electronic components, it is possible to create your own database, which has made it popular among radio amateurs.


Altium Designer
Professional software for creating a wide range of electronic boards and devices of varying complexity. Allows you to carry out the development and design of printed circuit boards at a high level. It is used in many industries dealing with electronic devices.


FreePCB
A software product that is widely used by professionals in the development and design of printed circuit boards of varying complexity. It is distributed free of charge, which allows the software to be used by many national enterprises and private companies that produce electronic devices.


Kicad
A free Russian-language professional program that allows you to develop printed circuit boards and electrical circuits of low, medium and high complexity. You can create boards and place components on them manually and automatically.


DesignSpark PCB
A free program that allows you to design electrical circuits and printed circuit boards of electronic devices at a professional level. The program is equipped with a powerful library of electronic components and has an auto-routing function.


PCB123
A software product with which amateurs and professionals can design and develop circuits and boards of any complexity with the creation of a three-dimensional image. The program is distributed free of charge.


TopoR
A paid, high-performance program released by a domestic manufacturer, designed for the design and manufacture of boards of any complexity. The appearance of the resulting board can be clearly seen in a three-dimensional image, which can be constructed in the same program.


EDWinXP
Paid professional software used for designing boards and developing electronic devices of varying complexity. The program can be downloaded for free, but the duration of such a program is limited (14 days).


P-CAD
Powerful and one of the very first professional automated programs for PCB design. Allows you to design boards of any complexity. The currently used version of the program was released in 2006.



A paid professional program designed for designing both light and complex single-sided, double-sided and multilayer boards. The functions available in the program allow you to simulate, carry out various tests and fully prepare the board for production. There is a trial version of the program, which is limited by the number of days of its use (30).

While looking for a simple drawing tool for electrical circuits with the ability to export to SVG, I came across a very interesting project - EasyEDA.

EasyEDA is a powerful, free, no-installation cloud platform for drawing and simulating circuits, PCB layout, and more.

It can be used on any hardware and run under any operating system - Linux, Windows or Mac OS. All it requires is any HTML5-compatible browser: Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, or Safari. EasyEDA is the result of the work of a small team of hackers. Now it has a rich library of thousands of electronic components (both for circuits and printed circuit boards, and for modeling) and tens of thousands of example circuits! And anyone can use this library and expand it.

The system looks more or less stable and easy to learn. The user interface is quite responsive in operation.

User-friendly interface with a bunch of libraries. Can import files from LTSpice, Altium Designer and Eagle. Allows you to lay out a printed circuit board from a schematic. Ability to export to gerber. Has a good autorouter Can work with digital, analog and mixed signals, cloud services provide fast modeling Flowchart editor Maybe it will be useful to someone Hotkeys Many operations can be conveniently performed using hot keys that can be configured - 64 combinations in total Export Printed circuit boards - Protel, Kicad, PADS
drawings - PDF, SVG, PNG
can export schematics and boards to JSON format Import Altium/ProtelDXP Ascii Schematic/PCB
Eagle Schematics, PCBs and Libraries
Kicad libraries and modules
Spice - models

The schematic editor window looks like this:


The central area of ​​the screen displays a schematic or printed circuit board. Moreover, you can keep many circuits/boards open at the same time - this is not possible even in Eagle! In the left panel you can select components from the EasyEDA library or your own. To transfer a component to the diagram, you need to click on it and the mouse cursor will take the form of this component. Then, if you click on the diagram, the component will be placed at the clicked location. Also, in the left panel you can navigate between your projects.

To connect elements together, there is a floating "Wiring Tools" window. The "Drawing Tools" window allows you to add explanatory text, shapes and drawings. And by clicking on an element, you can edit its properties in the right panel.

A short video demonstration from the EasyEDA website clearly demonstrates the capabilities of the system:

After some experience using the product, we can say that it is quite usable, although it is still somewhat damp. As long as Eagle CAD had limitations on board size, it made sense to master EasyEDA, getting used to its features and non-critical bugs. But, after Eagle was purchased by Autodesk and the restriction on the maximum board size in the free version was removed, EasyEDA, it seems to me, has significantly lost its relevance.

Ordering printed circuit boards

In conclusion, a few words about ordering printed circuit boards. The developed boards can be ordered directly from the system at relatively reasonable prices.

In general, cunning Chinese marketers inflate the cost of delivery several times over, while setting the price for the boards themselves as a symbolic $2 (for a dozen boards with dimensions no more than 10x10 cm).

In fact, the price with delivery for a dozen small scarves from EasyEDA is usually more expensive than from other Chinese companies. And this despite the fact that if you choose a solder mask of a color other than green, then the price immediately jumps by another $10..$20! And this is also a purely marketing ploy - EasyEDA boards themselves do not produce, and they are ordered from the factory, where the price does not depend on the color of the mask. Again, in China there are enough places where you can order boards with any mask color (except perhaps purple and matte masks) without extra charges for color.

In general, if you need to order a dozen small boards, then I personally would not do it in EasyEDA. But, if you need a large batch, and/or the dimensions of these boards exceed 10x10 cm, then I have not yet seen an alternative to EasyEDA.

In terms of production time - previously, boards from them arrived about three weeks from the date of order. But for some time now, everything has gotten worse and the delivery time has doubled. Moreover, the Signapur post office itself works very quickly, but the boards lie in the manufacturer’s warehouse for several weeks awaiting shipment (although all this time the order is listed in the system as sent, it is not tracked).


The quality of the boards produced is good (but not excellent). The mask may have small defects and irregularities; silk-screen printing (especially small ones) may be smeared and slightly shifted relative to the holes. But the quality of the tracks does not cause any complaints - no defects with sticking or breaks were noticed.



If you need a free PCB drawing program for your project, this list will help you find the solution you need.




It is a free and open source program for Microsoft Windows. It has been designed to be easy to learn and simple to use, while still maintaining a professional level of performance. Some of its features include the ability to create boards with the number of layers from 1 to 16, support for board sizes up to 60x60 inches, import and export of PADS-PCB netlists, and much more.




This program is created primarily for drawing electrical circuits. It comes complete with component libraries, making it easy to work with. In addition to being able to print your design, you can use TinyCAD to publish your designs by copying and pasting into a Word document or saving as a PNG raster image.




Osmond PCB is a flexible PCB design tool. It runs on Macintosh computers. Its diverse features include: virtually unlimited board sizes, large number of layers, large number of components, support for both through-hole and surface mount components.




BSch3V is a simple program for working with electrical circuits. The name "BSch" is an abbreviation for "Basic Schematic". It has only basic functions, which in turn simplifies the work.




This is a very easy program to learn and use. The layout of the printed circuit board is easy even for inexperienced users.




It is an open source software for creating electronic circuits and printed circuit boards. It is useful for anyone involved in the full development cycle of projects.




Runs under Linux and has tools for circuit development, simulation and prototyping. Currently, the gEDA project offers a serious set of free electronics design programs.




Fritzing software is an interesting open-source project for developers, researchers and radio enthusiasts who prefer a creative approach to creating printed circuit boards. Fritzing can help you learn more about electronic circuits, document designs, and even prepare a product for production.




DesignSpark PCB is perhaps the most accessible software in the electronics design world today. This program is easy to learn and use. It is designed to significantly shorten the product development process. At the heart of this unique approach is a powerful software engine that allows you to work with electrical circuits, design printed circuit boards and trace them.

I suggest you pay attention to the program for developing circuit diagrams and printed circuit boards DipTrace. This is a development of a Ukrainian company.

Actually, this is not one program, but a whole package for end-to-end design (from idea to files for production) including a circuit editor, board editor, component editor and package editor, as well as a 3D package editor. Well, all sorts of useful things like converting from various formats, various libraries, an autorouter and much more. There is also a 64 bit version.

Of the special advantages, we should note a simple and understandable interface, help in Russian, and most importantly, a special one that allows you to legally create serious circuits.

What I liked about this program was the ability to draw a circuit diagram and then use an auto-router to create a printed circuit board. There is a 3-D visualization of the printed circuit board. The program is very easy and quick to learn, the free license allows you to make 2-layer boards with up to 500 holes!

The sPlan 7.0 and Sprint Layout 5.0 kit, beloved by all DIYers, does not have a connection between the circuit design program and the printed circuit board. And the vast majority of available Proteus installations are infected with viruses.

DipTrace software package is a complete system for designing circuit diagrams and printed circuit boards. Includes four programs:

1. PCB Layout— board design using a powerful autorouter, convenient manual routing and a component positioning system.

2. Schematic— designing diagrams with support for hierarchy and an unlimited number of sheets. Export to PCB editor, netlist or simulator.

3. Pattern Editor— PCB package editor. Allows you to create your own libraries.

4. Component Editor— component editor. Drawing circuit design symbols and linking them to cases. Allows you to create your own libraries.

  • Standard Libraries— contain more than 100,000 components.
  • 3D preview— allows you to view a three-dimensional model of the board. More than 2.5 thousand 3D models of cases are supplied with the program.
  • Import Export— the system can import schematics, boards and libraries from P-CAD, PADS and other popular programs. Export to P-CAD, Gerber and other formats will allow you to prepare boards for any production.
  • Russian interface, help, textbook and formats- will allow you to quickly learn and effectively use the program.

Are you looking for an inexpensive, professional, licensed and easy-to-use circuit diagram and printed circuit board design system that will allow you to import your designs from P-CAD and other programs? Try DipTrace!

DipTrace Features and Functions

Intuitive user interface

Multi-level hierarchy and support for multi-sheet diagrams allows you to quickly and efficiently develop complex circuit diagrams. Converting a schematic to a board, updating a design from a modified schematic, and back-annotating are all done with just one click. All objects are highlighted during operation. The tutorial contains step-by-step recommendations and will guide you through all stages of creating a board.

Convenient manual and automatic positioning

Organize, List Position, and Automatic Component Placement features help you quickly and easily optimize component placement and board dimensions.

Powerful tracing capabilities

A modern meshless autorouter is capable of efficiently and quickly routing complex multilayer boards with different types of components, as well as simple two-layer designs. The mesh router can be used on simple single-layer boards with jumpers. Specctra DSN/SES support allows the use of external tracers. Advanced manual routing tools make it possible to quickly and efficiently design custom boards. Board sizes are unlimited.

Comprehensive design review

Wide possibilities for checking the project at various stages of creation make it possible to identify errors before sending files to the manufacturer. The verification includes the following stages: automated verification of new components in libraries, identifying possible signs of errors and minimizing the “human factor”; checking the validity of connections in the circuit (ERC); checking clearances, dimensions and various signs of errors on the board (DRC); checking the integrity of connections on the board; comparison with the diagram. Errors are displayed in the form of a list and displayed in the project; they can be corrected “on the fly” by restarting the check.

3D preview of the board

The 3D preview function simulates the appearance of the final product and makes it possible to identify design flaws before transfer to production. Thanks to hardware graphics acceleration, it is possible to rotate and scale the device model in real time. More than 2.5 thousand 3D models of cases are supplied with the program.

Circuit Simulation

Exporting a circuit diagram in the Spice-netlist (.cir) format will make it possible to simulate your device in the LT Spice program or any other external simulator.

Import Export

Import and export functions allow you to work with schematic diagrams, boards and libraries in the formats of other EDA and CAD applications: DXF, P-CAD, PADS, OrCAD and Eagle, as well as work with netlists: Accel, Allegro, Mentor, PADS, P -CAD, OrCAD, Protel 2.0 and Tango.

Creating files for production

In DipTrace you can get all the files necessary for production (Gerber RS-274X, Excellon N/C Drill, DXF). Vectorization allows you to export fonts and raster images to TrueType Gerber format.

Creating your own libraries

Convenient development tools for components and packages with automatic pin placement and numbering according to specified rules allow you to create components of any size and complexity in a matter of minutes.

This official page contains DipTrace downloads:

If you are not afraid of possible problems, then you can install DipTrace 2.2.9 beta - (the latest beta version with real-time DRC and 3D export) - 61.5 MB.

User manual in Russian (when installing the program, the manual in English is installed): - 9.4 MB.

Alternative tutorial on DipTrace: http://diptracer.ru (actually the same user manual, only abbreviated, with a lot of typos and pictures placed in the wrong places:(). Despite its shortcomings, it is well suited for quickly learning the program.

Articles on using DipTrace on .

Licensing policy for Russian-speaking users

The freeware version has a limitation of 300 pins and 2 layers, which is quite enough for amateur purposes.

Few? Then carefully read the “User Guide” - it describes how to officially obtain a free license for non-commercial use of the version DipTrace Lite(2 layers 500 pins). The commercial version of this program costs 1200 rubles.

Not enough again? - read the commentary to this article.

Program DipTrace is a design automation system (CAD) for creating and tracing printed circuit boards(PCB). Program DipTrace has a fairly convenient interface among programs specializing in creating circuit diagrams and tracing printed circuit boards. For greater convenience in the process of drawing, laying out circuits and boards, the program uses a highlighting mode for edited and associated radio elements.

Description of the DipTrace 2.1 program

The program has 4 modules:

  • DipTrace– development of printed circuit boards, wiring, both manually and automatically;
  • Schematic - drawing circuit diagrams;
  • SchemEdit is an editor for the components themselves.
  • ComEdit - editor of electronic components housings;

The editor of radio components and their housings uses a multi-layer design mode. It is also possible to draw and layout radio components and housings based on ready-made templates. It is possible to create cases with different parameters (number of legs, distance between them), which can later be changed directly in the PCB.

Circuit design supports the design of multi-page circuits. Using a common bus, a transition is made from one layer to another layer. The layers are connected by inter-page transitions. The created circuit diagram is transferred to a printed circuit board by selecting the appropriate menu item or pressing hot keys. The resulting board consists of component housings with electrical connections.

In manual tracing mode, DipTrace highlights all pins of network radio elements and automatically hides already wired connections. In the editing mode of already routed routes, it is possible to move part of the conductors while maintaining the angles of 90 and 45 degrees, or arbitrarily, change the width, move from one layer to another, etc. Automatic routing in DipTrace is performed using the built-in Simple Router router.

Printing of printed circuit boards and circuit diagrams on a printer is carried out at any required scale. The program exports boards to Gerber, N/C Drill, DXF formats. The Gerber program has the ability to mark technological holes. When exporting text, vectorization is performed with a given step, so you can use any font available in the program. There is also vectorization and export of raster black and white images to Gerber.

A special mode for exporting outlines to DXF makes it possible to create printed circuit boards by milling.

DipTrace has a significant number of component and package libraries. Typical libraries contain more than 40 thousand components from various manufacturers.