[ML-General] 3D Cad New Hotness?

[Stephan Henning]

For schematics and similar, I generally use Kicad. I've not found anything better in the freeware realm. I have used Eagle, free and paid, and was never very impressed by it. For small, simple designs the free Eagle works ok, I find the area constraints overly limiting and I often work in more than two layers. 

Kicad has the ability to generate sheet hierarchy, which might come close to the block diagram functionality you describe. I usually layout my main schematic in 'blocks' where each block is a separate sheet and contains some discrete part of the sub circuit with inputs and outputs of each block clearly labeled. 

If I'm making a quick layout that doesn't need a schematic (breakout boards, etc), I like FreePCB. Its interface is very easy to use once you've spent a little time with it. It can take net list inputs for larger circuits, but I don't think it reads in anything Kicad exports currently. It does read in Ltcad net lists though, and a host of others. 

There are other programs such as PCB123 and other that are sponsored by various board fab houses. The hey can be very powerful, but lock you in to using that board house usually. PCB artist from advanced circuits is relatively nice. 

For actual spice work, I'm rather fond of LTSpice. Linear out it on the market many years ago as a promotional tool for their chips and I've grown rather fond of it since then. You can import and create new parts, so you aren't limited to their product catalog.

Hope some of this helps. 

-stephan

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Sent from a mobile device, please excuse the spelling and brevity. 

> On Dec 24, 2015, at 7:21 PM, Avadon Dragon <avadondragon at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If you would like to get a copy of Sketchup 8 while you're looking for something new I may be able to come up with one.  That's the version I'm running on Linux.  The newer versions don't work well under Wine.
> 
> -Matt &
> 
> Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2015 14:47:59 -0600
> From: formerlydavid at gmail.com
> To: General at lists.makerslocal.org
> Subject: [ML-General] 3D Cad New Hotness?
> 
> Sketchup 8 somehow vanished from my computer, and the current version doesn't have license keys floating about the internet yet.  So, what is the current favorite no-cost 3D modeling software?
> 
> David T.
> 
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