You’ve got all the right ideas, but do you know what to do with them? Schematic design is needed to get those ideas out of your head and into action! Schematic symbols from the foundation of every electronics design, and if you’re like most engineers, then you probably started doodling your circuit on the back of a napkin or your notebook. Now that you’ve got all that circuitry on paper, it’s time to put it into practice in your PCB design tool.

1. Free Pcb Software Download
2. Eagle Pcb Software Tutorials

Tutorial: Panelizing PCBs in Eagle. However, it is not straightforward for the hobbyist to do it without expensive software tools. In the below example I am using Eagle 6.3.0 and a small design of mine. Open design in Eagle. Make sure only the PCB designer is open. Close the schematics design tool if necessary, otherwise the following.

A Few Disclaimers

There are a few things we’d like to cover before we journey further, specifically:

Know Your Symbols

It’s good to have a general understanding of all the parts that you can place on a schematic and their appearance. We’d recommend saving this handy reference list, or even printing out the chart below and hanging it above your desk.

Why? First, this will be a huge help if you ever need to review any schematic. And second, there’s a ton of symbols, many of which look different depending on if you’re looking at a US or international schematic. It’s near impossible to remember all of those, so keep this chart handy.

Some of the most common symbols you’ll find used in electronic schematics.

Creating a Schematic Is a Multi-Step Process

Next, let’s talk about the process that it takes to complete a schematic for a PCB. Selecting and placing your symbols is just one piece to the puzzle. To give you an idea of what it takes to consider a schematic fully complete, here are all the steps:

1. First, you need to find, place and orient all of your symbols on a blank schematic sheet. That’s what this blog post is all about.
2. Next, you need to provide some electrical connectivity between each part with nets and assign values and names to your parts. This will be covered in Part 2.
3. And lastly, you need to make sure everything is connected as it should be by running an ERC, or Electrical Rule Check. This will be covered in Part 3.

Let’s start working with schematic symbols!

Step 1 – Creating Your First Project and Schematic

We’re going to assume that this is your first time working with Autodesk EAGLE. Download EAGLE for free if you do not have it already. Every project is organized into a project folder, with schematics, PCB layouts, and other files all nestled together in one location. This makes it easy to keep things organized. Let’s create your first project and add a brand new schematic with these steps:

1. First, open Autodesk EAGLE, and you’ll be greeted with the Control Panel. This is your home away from home and will contain all of your libraries, projects, scripts, and more.
2. From the Control Panel, select File » New » Project and give your new project folder a name.
3. Next, right-click on your project folder and select New » Schematic to add a new schematic sheet to your project.
4. This will open a blank schematic document. Before you do anything else, save your schematic by selecting File » Save As and give it a name.

Now we have our project folder set up with our first schematic. If you go back to your Control Panelyou’ll be able to see all of your project files organized together as shown below:

Our first project folder and schematic highlighted in orange. There’s also a ton of example projects that are included in Autodesk EAGLE for free.

Step 2 – Activating Your Libraries

Next, you’ll need to activate all of the libraries that come with EAGLE, and there’s a ton of them! This is one of the remarkable benefits of using EAGLE, as most of the parts you need for your design have already been created by someone else, so you don’t have to spend time making them yourself.

To begin, select the Add icon on the left-hand side of your EAGLE schematic. This will open the ADD Dialog, notice that it is blank.

None of the libraries are showing up that come with Autodesk EAGLE. The solution – they need to be activated first.

By default, when you open EAGLE for the first time none of the default libraries will be activated. So let’s go back to your Control Panel and turn them all on with these steps:

1. In your Control Panel, select the arrow next to the Libraries folder. You can see we have a ton of libraries to add, but there’s an easy way to make this happen.
2. To add all of your libraries at once, right-click the Libraries folder, then select Use All.
3. If there are any libraries you want to activate or deactivate individually, simply right-click a library, and select Use.

As you can see in the image below, all of the part libraries in our Libraries folder have a green dot next to them. Bangla movie torrent free download. This means that they’re activated and ready for use in our schematic.

The green dots indicate that a library is active and ready for use.

You might have noticed that there are other sub-folders within the main Libraries folder from elektro, element14, etc. These sub-folders didn’t get activated from the steps you did above since the libraries are nested within another folder. But no worries, if you want to activate these libraries just repeat the steps above for each individual folder.

You’ve got your libraries activated now, let’s start searching for and placing your symbols.

Step 3 – Searching and Placing Your Schematic Symbols

Now that your libraries are activated let’s head back into your schematic document and select the Add icon on the left-hand side of your interface. Your ADD Dialog should now look similar to ours:

This is how your Add Dialog should look when your parts libraries are activated.

Let’s find our first part, a timer, with these steps:

1. In the Search field, type in “NE555” and press enter. This should bring up one search result from st-microelectronics – NE555 General purpose Bipolar Timer. You’ll notice that this part has its own preview that shows off its symbol, footprint, description, and attributes.

   Here’s an NE555 timer, notice how every part includes a symbol, footprint, description, and set of attributes.

2. Using this part in your schematic design is simple. To do this, select the part name, then select the OK button to enter into placement mode on your schematic.
3. Next, left-click anywhere on your schematic sheet to place your symbol. Let’s go ahead and place 3 of these timers so we can practice our deleting skills later.
4. Once you’re done placing your symbol, press the Escape key to get out of placement mode, which will open the ADD Dialog again.

You just placed your first schematic symbol. Easy enough, right? You can repeat the process above to add all of the parts you need for your schematic. There are a few more parts to add, so head back into the ADD panel and search for the following parts:

• Resistors – You’ll need 4 of these. Search for “resistor” and choose the first one in the resistor > R-US_ folder.
• LEDs – You’ll need 2 of these. Search for “LED5mm” which should be the only option that shows up in your search.
• Capacitor – You’ll need 1 of these. Search for “electrolytic capacitor” and choose the first one in the rcl > EL- folder.
• Connector – You’ll need 1 of these. Search for “M02” which should be the only Amp Quick Connector that shows up in your search.

If you were following along, then your schematic sheet should have the parts shown below (where they are placed doesn’t matter, right now):

All the schematic symbols you should have so far, we’ve got (4) resistors, (2) LEDs, (1) capacitor, (1) connector, and (3) bipolar timers.

Step 4 – Moving, Deleting and Rotating Your Parts

Alright, now that you have all of your parts placed, it’s time to learn how to delete all of those extra timers you added earlier. Then we’ll get your parts facing the right direction with some rotation options, and then we can move every symbol to its proper location!

Deleting Parts

You have three timers sitting on your schematic sheet, but you only need one. Let’s learn how to delete those extra ones with these steps:

1. Select the Delete icon on the left-hand side of your interface.
   
2. You’re now in delete mode, and all you have to do now is select the middle of each timer symbol to delete them.
3. Delete a part on accident? Just select Edit » Undo to bring it back to life. Or, press CMD + Z on Mac or Ctrl + Z on Windows.

We’re now down 2 timers, leaving us only the essential parts we need for this circuit.

Rotating Parts

Now that you have all of those unnecessary parts deleted, let’s get everything facing the right direct direction with these steps:

1. Select the Rotate icon on the left-hand side of your interface.
2. Next, left-click once on a resistor. This will rotate it 90 degrees. Left-click again to rotate it 180 degrees, and so on. Rotate all of your resistors 90 degrees, so they’re all vertical.

All of your other parts should already be in their correct rotation, but if not, make sure everything matches up with our schematic below:

Now that all of our parts are in the correct orientation we can be moved to where they need to be.

Moving Parts

Now, let’s get everything moved into place on your schematic. This part is important as your symbols need to be placed in the way they will be wired on your completed schematic. Follow these steps:

1. Select the Move icon on the left-hand side of your interface. This icon looks like a set of 4 arrows, all facing in their respective North, East, South, and West directions.
2. Next, left-click one of your symbols. This will highlight it in a bright red color, indicating that it’s now actively selected and ready to be moved.
3. You can now drag this symbol around on your schematic sheet wherever you please. When you’re ready to confirm the new placement, left-click again to place the part.

This process is pretty straightforward. Go ahead and move all of your parts around to make it match our schematic below:

Our schematic with all the symbols in their place, ready for wiring with nets.

Interface Alternatives

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There’s one handy alternative that we’d like to point out about the EAGLE interface before we send you on your way. In the steps above, you relied on the set of icons on the left-hand side of your interface to perform all of your actions. However, this isn’t the only way to get things done; there’s also the right-click Context Menu, check it out:

The right-click context menu provides a ton of options when working with symbols.

You can open this context menu by hovering over a symbol with your mouse or trackpad and right-click. You’ll notice that many of the actions we used today can be found in this menu. Keep the Context Menu in mind the next time you need to adjust your symbols. The choice is yours.

First Steps Accomplished

You did it! Your schematic symbols are now placed and ready to be wired, which we’ll be covering in our next blog. This is a big first step in your EAGLE journey. Here’s a quick recap of what you learned today:

Projects – First, you learned how to create a new project and schematic sheet in Autodesk EAGLE. This all went down in the trusty Control Panel.

Parts – Next, you activated your libraries and learned how to search for parts in the ADD panel, then you placed them on your schematic.

Placement – Lastly, you learned how to get rid of all those unnecessary symbols with the delete option and then you rotated and moved your parts to their new home.

This is a great first start, but it’s just the beginning of your schematic. Here’s what you can look forward to in the rest of the Schematic Basics series for Autodesk EAGLE:

• Schematic Basics Part 2 – Schematic Wiring & Values – Learn how to wire all of your schematic symbols together with nets and how to add values and part names.
• Schematic Basics Part 3 – Checking Connectivity with ERC – Learn how to confirm that you’ve wired everything together on your schematic correctly with an ERC, or Electrical Rule Check.

Making your first schematic in the free version of Autodesk EAGLE is just the tip of the iceberg!

When PCB is not discovered, all components are connected with wire externally, same as we connect all components on a breadboard. But this increases complexity and size. To solve this issue, PCBs are invented. Now for how to design a PCB, there are many tool and software available online, but out of them, which software suits your application, is discussed here in this article. We have already learned about Basics of PCB in our previous article. In this article, we will discuss and compare some good PCB designing software for their price, usability and other features. Here we are discussing some most commonly used EDA software like EAGLE, Multisim, EasyEDA, Altium design, OrCAD, and KiCAD. These softwares are widely used for PCB designing as well as for simulation of the circuit.

Eagle:

Most useful and common CAD software for PCB designing is EAGLE. EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor. This software was developed by CADSoft Computer but in 2016 EAGLE is taken by AUTODESK now.

EAGLE has a very simple, effective and easy interface and provide a library which contains a large number of electrical and electronics components. That is the main reason for being most popular PCB designing software among educationist, hobbyist, and professionals. EAGLE can be installed support on Windows, Linux and MAC platform and also the free version of this software is available for on website of AUTODESK.

Eagle has two editors; Schematic editor and PCB layout editor. The schematic editor is used to add all components and connect according to the circuit requirement. This schematic file has unique features like modular design block, multi-sheet schematic, electronic rule checking and real-time design synchronization. After this, schematic is directly converted into PCB layout editor, in which we can set components according to less complexity. This PCB layout editor also has some good features like alignment tools, obstacle avoidance, routing engine. These features are available in free version.

For professional use, EAGLE provides paid version which is available at 1000$/year. In this paid version, AUTODESK provides technical support that includes call, mail and online chat support and provides access to latest release software. But for educational and self-use free version of this software has enough features.

When you install the free version of EAGLE and open it, the first page is control panel as shown in below figure.

As shown in above figure, folder name and description of that folder or file are given. First is Documentation which contains some tutorial documents. Second is Libraries (.lbr), which contain a large list of electrical components. More components are easily available from the internet and, search them and paste into library folder at the installed directory. Next is design block (.dbl), where you can find some inbuilt design of most common circuits which you can directly add to your project. Design rules (.dru) contain rules for track, drill and final copper with important notes and some information. Next is User Language Programs (.ulp) which is used to access data structure and to create an output file. The user can build their own ULP file. Next is Scripts (.scr), which contains text files with eagle commands and it is very useful for automating a task like drawing a pattern, change of width of all traces. CAM jobs (computer aided manufacturing) (.cam) contains some standard CAM files and the last one is Projects which contains a list of the project with schematic and PCB layout file made by the user.

You can also make a Gerber file with the help of eagle. Gerber file is a universal language for PCB designing and this is the last step of PCB designing.

Multisim:

Multisim is widely used by students and researchers because it contains a powerful research, teaching and circuit design software. Multisim is advanced, powerful, industry standard, best in class SPICE simulation environment which is most popular world-wide because of their unique features and easy to implement circuit design. If you compare Multisim with eagle, the main advantage of Multisim is that it has a simulation environment which is not available in eagle but if you compare for only PCB designing purpose, eagle has good platform compared to Multisim.

Multisim was developed by electronics workbench and interactive image technology. At that time, this software is just used to teach electronic programs in colleges, this software was not much used for industrial applications but after some features add by National Instrument and it has widely accepted by professionals and educators. Multisim is available in two additions; one is made for students and educators and second is made for professionals and industrial purposes.

Multisim enhances powerful simulation technology with the ability to analyze analog, digital and power electronics across education, research, and design. This software has functionality like all-new parameter analysis, integration with new embedded targets and simplified design with user-definable templates. Multisim Standard Service Program (SSP) customers also have access to self-paced online training.

You can download the Multisim trial version from here.

Eagle Pcb Software Tutorials

EasyEDA:

EasyEDA is a web-based Electronic design automation (EDA) tool. It is a web-based tool, so no need to download or install any software. To use EasyEDA, you have to open easyeda.com only, from any HTML5 capable web browser and it doesn’t matter that which OS you are using, it can be used in windows, Linux, MAC. Only you require is web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera but it is recommended to use this in chrome or firefox for better performance. This is the biggest advantage of EasyEDA.

EasyEDA provides features like; simple, user-friendly and it is a very good platform if you don’t have much knowledge about PCB designing and it can use at anywhere, anytime and from any device. One advantage of this site is, it has large numbers of open source projects, which is easily available from the internet and also very good tutorials are available in EasyEDA official website. Even we have developed many PCB Projects using EasyEDA here in CircuitDigest. It has more than 500000 libraries with symbol and footprint of components and also has a feature to create your own component if it is not available in the library with symbol and footprint. One more advantage is, it can support other software libraries and schematic which includes Altium, EAGLE, LTspice, and DXF.

When you open https://easyeda.com/editor this link, it will look like below screenshot. In this editor you find navigation panel, toolbar, workspace, drawing tools, writing tools any many more functions. Let’s start with navigation panel which contains EELib, design, Parts, Shared, LCSC.

EELib means EasyEDA libraries which provide lots of components.

Design that is design manager which is used to check each component on the net easily.

Parts which contains schematic symbols and PCB footprints.

Shared if someone sends their project to you than this will appear in the shared tab.

LCSC: If you want to buy components to finish your PCB project, you should try another website LCSC.com

Drawing toolbar: Sheet setting, line, image, Bezier, arc, text, freehand draw, arrowhead, rectangle, polygon, ellipse, pie, drag and canvas origin.

Wiring toolbar: wire, bus, bus entry, netlabel, net flag VCC, net flag +5V, net port, net flag ground, voltage probe, pin, group/ungroup symbol.

Altium:

Altium is a costliest PCB designing software. If you want to buy a license version of this software its cost you 7,245 USD. So, this is a software for that company which has good budgets and best software for corporate engineers. If you are a freelancer than maybe this is not a good choice.

Altium designer have features like PCB designing, schematic capture, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development. This software also has some common features like, auto cross probing, interconnected multi-channel design, fast and high-quality routing, component placement system, signal integrity, hole tolerance definitions, visual layer stack management, collision detection, offline design system. At the end, it also can view entire PCB in 3D and also have a unique feature that you can navigate entire PCB. Most important part of Altium is that Altium provides a very good tip for PCB designing and it supports team. Also have unique graphic processing power which made Altium different from other cheap PCB designing software. This software is generally used to design a complicated and very complex circuit with very fast with realistic results. In 3D view, it shows physical looks of the components which give batter idea about circuit and it makes easy to understand.

If you want to get more idea about 3D visualization go through this 3D visualization video.

For personal view of mine, Altium is not a good choice because of cost only if you are not considering cost problem it is a very good software.

You can download the free trial of Altium Designer software for here.

KiCAD

KiCAD is a free software for electrical design automation and this software does not require any licence. Documentation of this software is distributed under two choices; GNU General Pubic Licence and Creative Common Atributes. KiCAD is freely available software, but for new development they accept money as a donation, if anyone want to donate, otherwise its free for all users. Setup of this software and libraries are easily available from its website. You can download the KiCAD and its libraries from its official website.

KiCAD is developed by jean-pierre charras. This software is used to create a BoM (Bill of Materials), Gerber file and also it provides 3D layout of the PCB. KiCAD also have their own library, which contains most of all electrical components. This software is also available in 19 different languages and it can run in windows, Linux and MAC.

KiCAD is divided into five parts;

KiCAD that is project manager; Eeschema that is the schematic capture editor; pcbnew that shows layout of PCB in both 2D and 3D; gerbfile is used to generate Gerber file; bitmap2component can convert images to footprint.

Out of this parts Eeschema and pcbnew is mostly used. Eeschema has features like custom symbol creation, electrical rule checking and hierarchical schematic sheets. In PcbNew, it provides very easy way to routing the components and also it makes easy to troubleshooting of PCB. if you want to change any vias, hole, trace or any other components of PCB, it is easy in KiCAD compared to other software. When you made a PCB, you can check your design in interactive 3D view. Eeschema and pcbnew also supports EAGLE files. If you are new with KiCAD, tutorials are also given in PDF format in many languages and also video tutorials are also available in website.

Overall software is good for beginners and biggest advantage is that, this software is free available. So, one does not require to purchase any licence or not require to find cracked version of it.

You can download the KiCAD from here.

OrCAD

Name of this software was coming from name of the company Oregon. OrCAD = Oregon + CAD. This software is not freely available. Price of this licence version is starting 2300 USD. OrCAD is developed by John Durbetaki, Ken and Keith Seymour.

OrCAD is divided in two parts; OrCAD Capture and PSpice. OrCAD Capture is used to design circuits and this part is known as PCB suite. OrCAD provides three types of PCB suites; OrCAD Standard, OrCAD Professional and Allegro PCB. OrCAD standard is a concept to production design environment and price of this is starting from 1300 USD. OrCAD Professional has professional grade PCB design capabilities. This version is costly compare to standard version and it worth 2300 USD. Allegro PCB is used for expertise level PCB design.

OrCAD PSpice is used for simulation and verification for circuit. PSpice is stands for Personal Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis. Capture and PSpice make complete simulator and PCB designing tool. PSpice is also available in two versions; PSpice Designer and PCB Designer plus. PSpice Designer is for industry standard simulation technology and contains 33000 parts in library. This version is starting from 1980 USD. PSpice designer plus is analyse for reliability, cost and yield. This version has all features of PCB designer and other unique features like cost analysis, yield analysis, design optimisation, system C/C++ modelling and simulation, reliability analysis and HW/SW co-simulation.

OrCAD PSpice can simulate circuit which is design in capture and it also can simulate design from MATLAB/Simulink. This feature makes OrCAD unique from all other softwares.

You can download the trial version of OrCAD from here.

Conclusion:

Out of these software, Eagle provides best results for PCB designing. If you are professional PCB designer and your application is very large and complex and you don’t have money consideration than go for Altium designer. If you are beginner and you don’t have much more idea about PCB designing than go for EAGLE or EasyEDA, because you find very good resources and tutorial from internet which is very helpful if you are beginner. If you need it in a Company and don’t want to purchase any licence then use KiCAD.

But I personally choose EAGLE, which supports in all types of applications.