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How do I get started designing and making and/or acquiring my own pcb? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/electronics@discuss.tchncs.de
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Hobbyist/DIY guy in a garage. I use Linux. I have briefly tested Eagle and a couple circuit design apps but didn't like anything about any of them, did not spend sufficient time with them either, though. Eagle is going away? Any recommended apps for designing pcb and/or services? I am also open to more artisinal methods. What direction should I point my momentum? Not afraid to try things out but also not wanting to waste time. I have been breadboarding for a minute, learned to solder, benn making some pcb gadgets and think I am ready. Thank you. (Pic is audio mixer with two NE5532 and LM386)

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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If I recall, Altium has a free tier, it's my driver for work, so I use that. As for acquiring a designed board, jlcpcb is a good, inexpensive PCB fab (there are others, but jlc has been surprisingly good for my use)

If you need assembly, too, some do it, it's not cheap though.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    For hobby work altium is quite ridiculous.

    I design with Altium professionally every day. It is buggy spaghetti code that they got that way by shoving more and more productivity-centered features in there with little thought.

    The libraries are a complete and utter shitshow also, which is why pretty much every company just makes their own.

    It works (usually) and you can design fast with it, but for someone lightly using it for hobbies, it is a massive overkill and steep learning curve to not get any benefit over KiCAD in the end unless they want to start doing multichannel complex flex-rigid designs with mechanical linked integration.

    Plus for someone wanting to just do a half hour or hour of designing in their free time, the 3-5 minute startup time would also get annoying.

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