Hi Salvo,
Thanks for the comments.
The schematics are all on paper, and constantly changing as I do the layout, and yes I agree, I still have to capture the final schematic electronically, and I still have to find a good tool for the job. ( Capturing schematics )
What I do for a living is to come up with ideas & solutions for problems mainly in the industrial automation environment. I only use Freescale MCU's ( for some reason I realy like the company, been using Motorola/Freescale for the past 25 years and never looked back, and they have a great product line, support is great and they have the most wonderful toys )
I will build a small number of very simple prototypes, generate the embedded code and some high level stuff to interface to whatever the customer has, demonstrate and show that I understand their problem, and that I have a solution - and then sell the whole package to them, with a little maintenance on the side. My principle interest is embedded software - making PCB's is just a nessasary evil.
Ok, as far as CAD/CAM packages go, I have evaluated most of the products on the market, and I don't like their cookie-cutter attitude. Also, it is rediculously expensive for what I actually use. When one of my designs go into production, I have a professional PCB designer rework the Gerbers into a comprehensive PCAD/OrCAD/PADS package ( Customer's choice ) with all the trimmings. As a design engineer ( electronic engineering background ) I know exactly what I want on the PCB and I have developed a vast array of tools in AutoCAD. The nice thing about doing it AutoCAD is that the embedded s/w is 80% finished when the artwork is done...
I use a tool by Artwork Conversion Software Inc (
http://www.artwork.com/acad/asm500/index.htm ) to do the translations - works very, very well. The main problem is that Gerbers consists of Pads, Traces and Polygons. Pads and traces must be specified in terms of appertures ( almost like a milling tool of various diameters and shapes ) which makes the GPGL -> Gerber conversion useless.
I am not a skilled PCB designer - rather a lazy embedded s/w developer. I keep the design as simple as possible and get the s/w to do the crazy stuff. To make a crow's nest PCB is easy ( in fact, any of the PCB CAD packages does this automativcally ) but to come up with something that is beautiful and functional ( Lim -> simplicity ) is an art.
As a matter of interest, I started to design and develop an Electric Vehicle about 3 years ago. The main vehicle computer uses a MCF52235 and I managed to design the board in 2 layers - PADS came up with a 4 layer board with a forest of via's and it is ugly.
In case you wondered, I do NOT use CodeWarrior ( even though I have great respect for Freescale, they make very good silicon - but they acquired a lemon from Metrowerks... ) I use embedded Forth (
www.forth.com/embedded ) - simple and imensely powerfull. Development time is roughly 50% of that compared to C and ASM
If there is anything I can help you with, let me know.
BR, John