PCB Design for the Mac

L

lucyyenic

New member
I've checked the useful links sticky (quite a few of the schematic editor links seem dead, btw) and googled around, abd the only Mac based software I can find is Eagle. The problem is, Eagle is not very intuitive to a noob like me.

Does anyone know of free / shareware native Mac Schematic & PCB editor, that is actually easy to use and doesn't require a week's worth of training to use?
 
Eagle is very good. I'm on Linux.

What parts are you having trouble with?
The schematic part is fairly straight forward. Place part, join it with lines.
The board editor has a few subtleties.

I'm not sure if KiCad is available on Mac or not.
 
I don't think there's a free/shareware solution for ANY platform that meets your criteria.

All of the PCB/schematic layout programs suck. Fritzing is SUPPOSED to be easier to use, but it is still under heavy development and is missing a lot of the features of other packages.
 
Yes, I too have had trouble learning Eagle on the Mac. But then, as I say in my sig, I'm not an engineer (I don't even play one on TV).

Fritzing (http://www.fritzing.org/) is going to be the one, eventually, specifically because of its breadboard view: you'll be able to build a circuit on screen as though you were building a breadboard (or, I guess ideally, you'd build on-screen and on a real breadboard at the same time), which can then be automagically become a schematic and, in turn, a PCB layout.

Unfortunately, though, right now you build a breadboard on screen and it makes a messy schematic that takes hours to correct and fix. I haven't even tried a PCB layout.

But it's going to be great, someday.

\dmc
 
I use Eagle on Mac, and have moved up from teh free version to the pay version, but even the free version is awesome..

yes, its got some 'odd' ways of doing things, but no more than any other of the pcb software i've used in the past..

Theres a really good set of tutorials at Sparkfun taking you through all the basics you need. Highly recommened.. I was going in a couple of hours with those.
 
Resurrecting a four-year-old thread ...

I switched over to Diptrace and have drawn many circuits with it and a few boards. It runs in some funky X11/Wine thingamajig but once you remember that you need to use Windows shortcuts (CTRL rather than CMD), it's fine.

The only downside is the limited nature of the pre-drawn components, but it's easy enough to find the spec sheet on an item and draw the component from that.

\dmc
 
I to run Diptrace on my Mac. works great and creating custom components is not that hard.
I like using Diptrace because I can draw the schematic first, then attach it to the layout and make sure I have not forgotten anything.
I used Diptrace to create and layout the new Renzilla controller. Works great
 
They do private projects too. And the librarys are amazing. But you are forever locked into their eco system as the exporting doesn't allow you to go back to another package.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
 
Hi Matt,

Matt_Edwards said:
...But you are forever locked into their eco system as the exporting doesn't allow you to go back to another package.
Click to expand...

You may not have found this yet but in the upper right corner of the EasyEDA window is a dropdown "Super Menu".

If you do:

Super Menu > Miscellaneous > Netlist for Document

or, for a multisheet schematic:

Super Menu > Miscellaneous > Netlist for Project

then you are offered the choice to export a schematic netlist as:

Spice...
Protel/Altium for PCB...
Kicad for PCB...
PADS for PCB...
FreePCB for PCB...

with the greyed out (so probably future enhancement) options of

Eagle for PCB...
Orcad for PCB...

All the schematic, symbol, PCB and footprint files can also be exported in the open JSON format from the folder icon on the top toolbar:

Document > EasyEDA Source...

And, although you can get your PCBs made directly by EasyEDA, you are free to download the final Gerbers and take them to any PCB manufacturer of your choice.

I've been using EasyEDA for about a year now and I'm still amazed at the power of this tool but the fact that it's free and platform independent just blows me away.
 
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charleskerr, thank you sharing this useful tool with us. Although it needs a few improvements but I think it’s a great tool for people starting to do their PCB layouts themselves. I found it really easy to use and quick. I recently used DesignSpark, a free of cost PCB design and layout software with amazingly helpful online community. I urge you to check it out as well since it might give you some ideas to implement in your PCB layout tool.

http://blog.7pcb.com
 
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David23Kipp said:
I recently used DesignSpark, a free of cost PCB design and layout software with amazingly helpful online community.
Click to expand...

I checked it out and found an .EXE file, which won't run on my Macintosh (a key word in the title of this thread).

\dmc
 
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