CAD/CAM-EDA

Bartels AutoEngineer - A professional fully featured CAE/CAD/CAM-EDA

Wednesday, 25 May 2011 21:58

Bartels AutoEngineer (aka BAE) is a professional (and commercial) CAD tool for electrical/computer engineers. It basically consists of a Schematic Editor, a Layout Editor with Autoplacement and Autorouter and a CAM Processor with a supplemental module for viewing and processing CAM data. A Packager program module and a Backannotation function are provided for automatic forward and backward annotation of net list data from the schematics to the layout and vice versa. BAE supports all phases of modern computer-aided PCB design including schematic capture, physical PCB layout featuring powerful Autoplacement and Autorouting facilities and, finally, generating all of the required manufacturing data and documentation. BAE Schematics, the Schematic Editor of BAE Professional, is freely available and can be operated in stand-alone mode. Demo software configurations of BAE Professional (BAE Demo, fully-featured except for data output) are available free of charge for test and evaluation purposes. This CAE/CAD/CAM-EDA software includes three configurations: Professional, HighEnd and Educate/Entry. E.g. the following components are included with the BAE Professional software:

Schematic Editor with hierarchical circuit design support;
Forward/Backward Annotation;
PCB Layout system including Layout Editor, Autoplacement, automatic copper fill, Bartels AutoEngineer, Bartels Autorouter®;
CAM Processor and CAM View with Gerber viewer;
Integrated, object-oriented database system (DDB, Design DataBase);
In-built Neural Rule System;
Bartels User Language Compiler, User Language programs with source code;
Utility programs for database management, foreign net list and design data import, etc;
Extensive part libraries for SCM and PCB layout;
Design data examples;
Documentation (Bartels AutoEngineer User Manual, Bartels User Language Programmer's Guide).

If you want to try a free demo version click here.

Eagle CAD

Monday, 01 December 2008 21:23

EAGLE Layout Editor is an easy to use, yet powerful tool for designing printed circuit boards (PCBs). The name EAGLE is an acronym, which stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor. This is a commercial software and the freeware versione, EAGLE Light, has these limitations: 1 schematic sheet, 2 signal layers, 100x80mm routing area but, apart these three limitiations, the EAGLE Light Edition can do anything the Professional Edition can do. Therefore there is no need for converting netlists between schematics and layouts. You can even load, view and print drawings that exceed these limits! The program consists of three main modules;

Layout Editor;
Schematic Editor;
Autorouter;

which are embedded in a single user interface. If you try it (freeware version), click here. Note: EAGLE Layout Editor can generate text files with the help of a User Language Program (ULP). This text file needs to contain the SDL commands to make the layouts glow in realistic 3-dimensional brilliance. Additionally EAGLE does not know anything about measurements in the 3rd dimension. So it was necessary to generate a library which contains all sorts of models to be used with POVRay. So, if you want good-looking pictures of your latest design, then you should probably have a look at a little tool designed to work on Eagle layouts to generate a 3D ray-traced rendering of your boards. The tool is called Eagle3D and can be found here.

EMC2 - GNU/Linux and CNC machine

Monday, 10 August 2009 13:04

EMC-EMC2 a software that implements real-time control, but the Enhanced Machine Controller is a lot more than just another CNC mill program; it can control machine tools, robots, or other automated devices EMC-EMC2 (Enhanced Machine Control - version 2) is a software that implements real-time control, but the Enhanced Machine Controller is a lot more than just another CNC machine (Computer Numerical Control) mill program; it can control machine tools, robots, or other automated devices. It can control servo motors, stepper motors, relays, and other devices related to machine tools. It runs in realtime under GNU/Linux with the RTlinux or RTAI patch. It provides a software PLC, and uses the HAL for flexibility. EMC2 is an offshoot of the original NIST Enhanced Machine Controller and the new version is (primarily) a GPL'd project. The major goals are:

Make the project more friendly to new developers. This means a simpler build process;
Reduce complexity by eliminating support for platforms other than GNU/Linux on x86, with either RTAI or RTLinux for realtime;
Incorporate a Hardware Abstraction Layer that makes the realtime code more modular and allows pins and I/O devices to be reconfigured easily;
Add some of the features, these include rigid tapping and single point threading, improved contouring, a built-in PLC using ClassicLadder, and others.

For more information click here.

FidoCadJ - Create your electronic circuits

Friday, 15 January 2010 22:16

FidoCadJ provides you a multiplatform drawing application specially designed for electronics. Schematics and PCB can be easily traced and represented by a very compact text format, easy to embed in a newsgroup post. The drawings can be exported in a multitude of graphic formats e.g. jpg, png, svg, eps, pdf and, very interesting feature;

pgf file format: a vectorial format to be used directly in a LaTeX document, when using the pgf package available in the CTAN archive or visit the package home page here. This exportation option was thought in particular to export schematics and uses an easily editable script. The text attributes will not be translated. This allows the introduction of LaTeX code directly into the drawing;
scr file format: starting from version 0.21, FidoCadJ allows the exportation of a drawing to a script that can be imported in CadSoft Eagle. To use this feature, it is necessary to install the library FidoCadJLIB.lbr into the directory lbr of the current installation of Eagle. The library can be downloaded from FidoCadJ’s website. At the time of writing, this option works only with schematics containing only the most common symbols. Some drawing elements such as pads and tracks are not available yet. These will not be exported to the Eagle script.

Here are some key features of FidoCadJ:

Draw electrical schematics and PCBs;
Export in a variety of graphic formats;
Multi platform;
Easy to use;
Compact text format, for copy/pasting in Usenet messages;
FidoCad compatible.

FidoCadJ is written in the Java programming language and is distributed as a single .jar file to launch with command java -jar name_file.jar. You can download file releases of FidoCadJ project from FidoCadJ’s website.