Hi! I wanted to know your opinion about some of the online electronics design tools like pcbweb, upverter, circuitlab or meowcad. Do you have any preference? why? Thanks!
Added 8 years, 8 months ago.
I noticed a new blog posted on this topic today which covers both online and offline tools: http://www.smashingrobotics.com/useful-tools-for-drawing-electrical-circuits/
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.
Thanks Natasha!, I actually found another interesting article written by you: http://electronicdesign.com/analog/hands-pcbweb-latest-pcb-design-tool-hit-web
I was expecting though a little bit more info about meowcad. I think it is one of the latest and I would like to know what differentiate it from the rest.
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.
Hi ErnestoE! I developed MeowCAD so I'm happy to speak a little bit about it (I hope it's not against etiquette to post here).
MeowCAD is an in browser electronics design tool. You can design schematics and PCBs in it. Some salient features:
* 4 layer boards
* unlimited board size
* exports to Gerber
* experimental import for KiCAD schematic components and footprint libraries
* experimental export to KiCAD format
* experimental export to GCode (for isolation milling)
Along with the KiCAD schematic and board libraries, Adafruit's, Dangerous Prototypes and a few SparkFun component libraries and footprint libraries are loaded.
The electronic design portion runs completely in the browser and communicates updates back to a central server. This means work persists and can be accessed by any computer with a compatible web browser.
MeowCAD is, as far as I know, the only online free and open source software. There are other FOSS alternatives (KiCAD, etc.) but they are desktop applications and not 'web applications'.
You can see the source for the website at https://github.com/abetusk/www.meowcad.com and the source for the web application portion at https://github.com/abetusk/bleepsix. There is currently an experimental Docker image that you can use to run MeowCAD locally at https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/abetusk/meowcad/.
You can use MeowCAD for free (as in gratis) right now. You can register if you want to have a persistent account but you can use the schematic and PCB layout portions without having to register if you just want to look around.
If you do end up using it, drop me a line, I'd love to have some feedback!
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.
This sounds cool! Thanks for sharing it. I'm sure there will be many engineers eager to try a new online tool in the space.
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.
Thanks a lot abetusk! I will definitely give it a try and let you know. Thanks again for the valuable information.
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.
BTW PCBWeb used to be an online tool, but now is pretty much an offline tool. I was installing a lot of these and was liking PCBWeb and Diptrace a bit. Now I am taking a PCB Design course and have a 90 trial of Altium Designer (even that isn't free). I figure it was worth looking at the full featured one in the course so i can see what "full featured" means, and then when I go back to looking for cheaper alternatives at least know what I'm missing. So far, I hate Altium for making parts (schematics/footprints) as compared to either of the two I mentioned :)
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.
Actually I misspoke slightly.. PCB web tool is installed on your machine, your files are also on your machine.. just the library is cloud based (at least these days).
Answered 8 years, 8 months ago.