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Pcb Designer 154: Compare and Contrast the Top PCB Design Software in 2023



EasyEDA is a free and a paid EDA tool. EasyEDA provides a powerful schematic capture, PCB editor, Libraries designer, a project management tool, and lastly a team collaborator. EasyEDA also has an integration with LCSC.com component catalog for providing real-time stocks and pricing information about components used.


Upverter is a web-based EDA just like EasyEDA for enabling hardware engineers to design, share, and review schematics and PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards). It does for open-source hardware design what GitHub have done for open-source software development, providing a collaboration platform. It comes with a schematics capture, PCB editor, a system designer, 3D viewer, team collaboration, and many more. More information about the platform is available here.




Pcb Designer 154



TinyCAD is a simple and basic electronic circuit schematic and PCB designer. It is an open-source software project. It supports standard and custom symbol libraries. It supports PCB layout programs with several netlist formats and can also produce SPICE simulation netlists.


Good component selection underlies the success of every electronic product - so just how does the designer go about choosing the most appropriate component? Gone are the days of the design engineer thumbing through their dog-eared component data book, jotting down a part number on a paper parts list, and throwing that parts list over the wall to purchasing for the first production run.


Not only are the components chosen to fulfill the necessary technical requirements, the designer must also consider the price, the availability and lead time, as well as the requirements of that component during the assembly and testing phases. Choosing the wrong component can be costly, not just in terms of the final unit price, it can also impact the product delivery schedule, or even the ultimate success or failure of the product in the market.


While the highly compressed design/test/manufacture product development cycle means the designer has very little room for error as they select the components, the tightly enmeshed nature of the component information stream - from the manufacturer, to the supplier, to the search aggregation portal, means that accurate component-choice information can be placed right on the designer's screen, as she scrolls through a list of potential components. Altium recognizes the critical role that component selection plays in the design process, and develops software technologies, products and teams that help deliver easy-to-use, detailed and accurate component data and component selection systems, directly in to the designer's workspace.


Ultimately, every single part used in the design must have detailed supply chain information. In the past, designers had to add this information into each component during library creation or design capture, or post-process their design BOM to add the supply chain details in later. ActiveBOM removes this constraint - the designer can now add supply chain information to the components at any time during the design cycle, entering it directly into the BOM instead of the schematic components, if they choose.


Not all design components are crafted to the same standard. In days gone by the component started as a simple symbol in a symbol library, with qualifying details such as the value, the footprint and the manufacturer part number, being added during the design process. An easy and flexible system for an individual designer, but a nightmare to manage and maintain in a team, over time. Why was the manufacturer part number changed? who changed it? will the looser tolerance on that new part work in all the products that the part is used in? - there's a long list of potential issues awaiting the design team when their components are created and organized in this way. Altium refers to these components as unmanaged components.


Components not placed from a managed content server are referred to as unmanaged components. While these parts do not have Part Choices defined, they are still supported by ActiveBOM. Since unmanaged components do not come with links through to the supply chain, those links can be defined in ActiveBOM instead. ActiveBOM can search the parts for suitable manufacturer details in the existing component parameters. If a part does not include sufficient manufacturer details, the designer can define manufacturer links directly in the BomDoc.


There are millions of electronic component available today, through thousands of suppliers, from hundeds and hundeds of manufacturers. Altium appreciates how time-consuming it is for the designer to research the components they need in their designs, checking not only the performance characteristics but also the price and availability, of the many components they need in their design.


Component selection is often a process of juggling availability, unit price, and manufacturing volume. One of the great strengths of ActiveBOM is its ability to bring detailed, up-to-date supply chain information right into the design environment. Having access to this information means the designer can easily monitor their component choices, and adapt these as required.


To ensure the design can be built, most designers choose components that can be replaced by an alternative, if required. In ActiveBOM, this is achieved by adding additional Solutions (as just discussed), and then configuring the BomDoc to use multiple solutions using the Solutions per Item feature, as discussed earlier.


It's not uncommon to identify an issue with a component when the BomDoc is being checked and made ready for ordering the parts. For example, the designer may have forgotten to finalize the selection of a component, or a component has gone EOL and the designer wants to explore the price and availability of potential replacements. Previously the only way to resolve this was to return to the schematic and edit the component, select a suitable part, then refresh the BomDoc. 2ff7e9595c


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