PCB design for guitar amps

[Amptroll]

Kevin and Greg,
     Hello guys.  I have been reading about use of Eagle here on the site and some of the statements made, makes
 my heart go out to everyone.  The negative issues that you all experience with Eagle would simply go away if
you would switch to Altium.  Especially part creation.  Altium has several different wizards that greatly decrease the difficulty you are experiencing, not to mention the ability to import symbol/footprint models from sites (mostly free) that cater to ECAD.  My go to site has been SNAPEDA. 

     Yes I know Altium is more expensive, but for the professional making a living doing pcb work   it is a must.  The only other one that have used that compares with Altium is Mentor Graphics PADS.  But even this cannot compete as far as the part creation, library management and portability if you are working with other designers on a project.  Altium has something that is called an integrated library, which facilitates the ease of sharing not only the board files that use the parts but the libraries themselves.  It also has ability to compile all of the documents in the project.  All of the libraries that are used in the project, have a copy contained in the project folder. 

    I have Eagle, used it for about a week and then went to Altium and never looked back.  Not that it is not quality, but Altium and PADS are in a different league than Eagle and the rest, even OrCad Spice, which I own a copy of.  The only reason I can see not going to it would be cost, but if you are designing boards constantly as I do, then it is a must, at least this is my opinion.  If you do boards occasionally then I can see not wanting to layout the bucks.  You can download a trial version of course, it does limit you in board size, but you can make a couple of designs to experience the soft.

Take care and peace to all,

Rob


Hi Greg

"I feel your pain"

Eagle was designed back around 1985, as were most spice and PCB CAD systems, with continuous updates since then. Version-4 line persisted until about 2006 when they brought out Version-5 - now they're up to 7 or more. Fortunately, the version-4 that I bought still works and I think it was all you could get from them at the time, or it was the Pro package. Anyway, it allows massive board sizes, almost unlimited library, and so on.

The trial version was always crippled but maybe for the new versions they have crippled it even further? How big a board do you call a "note book"?

Making library parts can be a bit difficult for sure, because Eagle has an antiquated core. It was designed for laying out computer boards, so certain functions have names appropriate to that, such as "Gate swap". This allows you to swap identical sections within a part in the schematic, allowing an easier layout. For example, in a tube amp, a 12AX7 has two triodes and they will be dropped into the schematic in the order of A then B, and these might correspond to pins 1,2,3 and 6,7,8. In the actual layout depending on which way the tube faces, you might want the signal to hit the B section first then the A side, so doing Gate-swap in the schematic fixes that for you.

As far as making the parts, that is a whole thread.

As far as laying out your board to fit the card sizes you have, you might have to split the circuit into smaller portions that could be used as functional blocks to build a variety of overall circuits. For example, one card with just the output tubes. Another card with just the splitter. Another card with a 2-stage preamp. maybe you can have more stuff per card, but it depends on the size limit you are dealing with

To lay out a full-size board might mean having to shell out $$ for the non-crippled program. Good thing once you do that is you have a licence and can use it to acquire future versions.i