DipTrace

Community PCB Design
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Is anyone using DipTrace? I’ve been a long time Eagle user, but holy cow that program is showing its age. I’ve been able to import eagle libs into diptrace no problem. And the UI is much better than Eagle. But I’m wondering if anyone that uses it for hours a day can comment on stability and what is most annoying about the program. They have a 1000 pin 4 layer version that is $130 or so if you aren’t going to use it for commercial boards.

Thanks

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I use Diptrace, often for hours a day, and am exceptionally pleased with it. It is leaps and bounds over Eagle.

You can read my review of the last version of software (almost a year now!) at http://tmech.blogspot.com/

1.5 adds many great features, and has fast screen rendering.

Todd

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I spent some time playing with it and, so far, I’m not flushing Eagle. It feels clunky to me but maybe that’s just because I’m accustomed to something else. I created a small schematic - transistor, resistor, diode and a bunch of connectors. The connectors didn’t get brought from the schematic into the PCB. I’m not sure why. I also find the libraries hard to wade through - there doesn’t seem to be a compact way of seeing what’s in them. It’s hard to understand the details of a given component. Perhaps I need more time at it…

I’ll continue to play with it a bit more to see if it gets more natural. So far it feels less powerful than Eagle.

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Ahh, DipTrace… I remember using that quite a few years ago, can’t remember what build it was but it was on my old '98 PC…

You could download that “Full-featured 30-day trial” version and when it was nearly up you could turn back the date on the PC

and get another month out of it… :slight_smile: (don’t know if they have fixed that, proberbly)

I think the only thing i really liked about it was how easy it was to rotate components to any angle, other than that i found it

“clunky” and awkward like Philba said.

I used it for proberbly 5 weeks, then i found Eagle :wink:, been using it ever since… (i always make sure it’s up to date)

(i was using ver. 5.2.0 and just noticed that version 5.3.0 has just been released :), and the board margins start at the origin now! :smiley: )

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FartingMonkey92:
“Full-featured 30-day trial” version and when it was nearly up you could turn back the date on the PC

Scofflaw!

FartingMonkey92:
then i found Eagle, been using it ever since

Take care not to corrupt any legal EAGLE files.

I’ve read horror stories of cracked EAGLE software

that self-destructs legitimate copies when project

files and libraries were exchanged.

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I’ve never knowingly use illegal software, and if i hear of a good piece of software i always check out it’s website first.

Also i have never needed to use DipTrace/Eagle for commercial use so i’ve always used the free stuff… And then i

never really used DipTrace… It kinda just sat on my computer as i didn’t like it… :lol:

“Full-featured 30-day trial” version and when it was nearly up you could turn back the date on the PC

Found that out by accident…

I don’t really know why people use “cracked” or pirated versions of stuff… :frowning: