It's really hard to sell a professional software which has no import possibilities. Many, if all, major players can even import their competitors native files. I have imported a PADS project with 100% success into Altium Designer. That is something you must see in order to believe it.
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PCBCAD51 allows a subset Gerber and drill file import.
As far as I know no one else's software will import PCBCAD51 files as I have never made the file format public. Its a highly compressed binary data format, most other people use text based data structures.
Moving from one CAD package to another can often be a painful process.
Different design strategies in different packages.
Different key presses to learn.
I have tried most of the available free and try for free packages and on quite a few just gave up as it was too difficult.
I always come back to PCBCAD51. It uses a lot of EasyPC key presses so was easy to move on to.
I have sold around 3,000 copies of PCBCAD51 and no one has ever asked for my file format information.
I think its a bit of red herring as I am rarely asked if I can import other CAD package files.
Even then I am not sure how you get hold of other CAD package file formats, I don't let mine out and cant see why others would.
I think its a bit of red herring as I am rarely asked if I can import other CAD package files.
Even then I am not sure how you get hold of other CAD package file formats, I don't let mine out and cant see why others would.
I'm back now from South Caribbean Sea. Spent some time on pcbcad51 in particular its operation on wine. All three of my best computers are OSX so that is preferred platform.
No issues at all on the Vista and XP computers.
I was not able to correct some sort of wine timing problem on Mouse. It worked but was very jittery. It could be the implementation of wine (Crossover paid version 17.1). I have not contacted Nigel about it so may be a simple fix.
The radial library footprint generator is very easy to use especially for building tube devices.
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So now I downloaded Diptrace to give it a try. Still uses wine but is packaged as an app.
Thats where I am now. Just getting the feel of it and looking at examples.
I may still use pcbcad51 but probably will upgrade to a new windows computer if that is the case.
No issues at all on the Vista and XP computers.
I was not able to correct some sort of wine timing problem on Mouse. It worked but was very jittery. It could be the implementation of wine (Crossover paid version 17.1). I have not contacted Nigel about it so may be a simple fix.
The radial library footprint generator is very easy to use especially for building tube devices.
___________
So now I downloaded Diptrace to give it a try. Still uses wine but is packaged as an app.
Thats where I am now. Just getting the feel of it and looking at examples.
I may still use pcbcad51 but probably will upgrade to a new windows computer if that is the case.
The mouse pointer should be OK but the crosshair uses a lot of graphics power so can sometimes lag the pointer a bit.
If it is causing problems you can download the latest version which turns the cross hair cursor on/off with control-c.
I have just made up a demo version.
Works as normal except for printing pcb's and generating gerber files.
http://murtonpikesystems.co.uk.servepreview.net/pcbcad51demo.html
Works as normal except for printing pcb's and generating gerber files.
http://murtonpikesystems.co.uk.servepreview.net/pcbcad51demo.html
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