well, I have to apologize upfront for the provocation. A coworker of mine, a PADS Guru, did do a test drive of EAGLE and had mentioned to me it feels amateurish to him.
I do use EAGLE for my home projects and occasionally at work and I am quite happy with it. I am not sure what he meant, since PADS does feel weired to me when I use it.
To me PADS is just another crappy corporate software, patched together like many other MENTOR graphics products.
So what is your opinion on EGALE vs. so called professional software.
I can only comment on my experience with Eagle vs. Pads. I have been using Eagle for 10 years now and I can say that I am very comfortable with it. I think it does a great job for what I design. I have at least 20 products that I have produced with it and continue to do so.
As for Pads, the only reason I ever tried it was for a possible PCB design job I was going after. The potential employer suggested all candidates have working knowledge of the software. So I downloaded the freebie version to try. Within an hour of installing it, I was so frustrated, I gave up. I hated it. I could’nt even get a simple project started.
The worst part, I made the mistake of using a real email in their crummy sign up section just to download the free version. They used this to stick a sales guy on me for weeks. He blew my phone up, calling just about every day. I finally told him I hated the software and it was the biggest POS I ever tried to learn. He said “Oh, let me send you some good tutorials.”. When I got the tutorials, they were worse than the regular user’s manual.
I uninstalled the free version and never bothered with it again.
Given the number of mouse operations and keystrokes it takes to get anything done in Eagle, I can get a typical design done 2x or 3x quicker with Pulsonix. Someone on this forum who was applying for jobs got laughed at when he mentioned in interviews that he used Eagle.
I would agree with your coworker. I’m only familiar with Eagle and Altium Designer. I did my first few major designs with Eagle in college, but then switched over to Altium Designer when I joined the real world. I hope to never have to go back.
I understand that the pro packages have strengths, even if they also have quirks of their own.
However, for $1000 I was able to buy a PCB CAD program that I understand immediately, is quite full featured, and has wide support in the community my business operates within.
It’s easy to scorn Eagle when you see mostly designs made by first-time users, where autorouting results are accepted as gospel. It’s also easy to feel superior that the package you use costs 5, 10, 20 or more times the price of Eagle, even though you didn’t have to pay for it yourself.
I run my own business using Eagle, I don’t have to worry about someone not hiring me and sneering because Eagle isn’t what the “us big boys” use. I’ll continue to use Eagle right up to the point where I’m about to lose $25,000 because it doesn’t have certain features.
leon_heller:
Given the number of mouse operations and keystrokes it takes to get anything done in Eagle, I can get a typical design done 2x or 3x quicker with Pulsonix.
To be fair, that's most likely because you don't use EAGLE as much as Pulsonix.
MichaelN:
As Protel user of many years, I found Eagle almost impossible to use. So many of the things about it are completely counter-intuitive.
The funny thing is I had to use Protel (well Altium DXP) a while ago for a design and found the same, it was impossible to use coming form EAGLE, everything seemed to be counter-intuitive.
That’s not to say that either is counter-intuitive, it’s just really what your used to.
Everything has it’s place. If I was designing 28 layer board for a multi-million dollar corporation, I probably wouldn’t use EAGLE.
For the 2, 4 and 6 layer designs I have done in EAGLE I don’t have any problems. When you compare the price to something like Altium DXP or Pulsonix (who don’t advertise the price, which means it’s expensive), EAGLE seems like pretty good value to me.
leon_heller:
…Someone on this forum who was applying for jobs got laughed at when he mentioned in interviews that he used Eagle.
Keep in mind, this situation was a case where the candidate did’nt bring any example of their work. So what if it’s Eagle produced, if the board was done well?
Its all in the hands of the user. As far as the autorouter, if you think its crap, don’t use it. Run everything by hand, you have that option.
I too use Eagle with my personal business and it has treated me well.
I think it gets really tiring listening to all of the PCB designer snobs. I guess just because I use Eagle, I am lower than you :roll:
I remember the thread about how someone got laughed at in a job interview for using Eagle…
I myself have been a die-hard Altium user for the past few years since I got into industry, and before that I used Eagle… I vastly prefer Altium, but in the end Waltr said it best… It’s the results that count.
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted a similar comment before, but the tool you use doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know how to design a PCB!. If you know HOW to design a good PCB, you can get it done with virtually any tool once you learn the tool…
If I were hiring for a company using Altium, I’d go for a person with plenty of Eagle experience designing complex, well done PCBs than someone with very minimal Altium experience who hasn’t designed the same level of PCBs… (Besides, I’m also a big proponent of the fact that people who design things like PCBs for a hobby in addition to being an engineer, are much better at actually designing things and being creative than people who only went into engineering for the perceived money)
I have PADS9 installed on this machine and it seems pretty backwards in the way its used, time for some reading I guess. Initial library seems very limited too.
Professionals tend to create their own libraries, to conform to company standards and because many of the supplied libraries have serious errors. Eagle has a bad reputation in that respect, but I’ve found the (very) occasional error in Pulsonix libraries. I don’t like the way that many of the library parts have been created - the schematic symbols don’t look right - so I tend to create my own using their footprints, once I’ve checked them.
Pulsonix has an optional database feature, so that designers at different locations can access a corporate SQL library database via Ethernet, with one or more full-time staff doing nothing but creating new parts and maintaining the library. I don’t think that Eagle has anything like that.
