PCB Technical - About PCB printed circuit board design software

PCB (Printed Circuit Board), the Chinese name is printed circuit board, also known as printed circuit board and printed circuit board. It is an important electronic component, a support for electronic components, and a provider of electrical connections for electronic components.

PCB has been the backbone of the electronics industry since humans first connected carbon chips and silicon chips to form workable electronic products. From the beginning of the manual drawing of PCB design to the larger component library, powerful automatic layout and routing functions, it is more and more convenient for our engineers to carry out circuit board design work.

The specific PCB design can be divided into several parts, namely schematic design, PCB layout, circuit simulation, CAM engineering software, copy board software, etc. PCB design software generally includes two major modules: schematic design and PCB design. Some powerful PCB design software even includes the above modules.

In this article, the main PCB design software refers to the two parts of schematic design and PCB layout.

Altium Protel series

One of the most realistic criteria for measuring the pros and cons of a software is to look at its market share, that is, its popularity and popularity, then Altium Protel deserves to be ranked in front of many PCB design software.

The Protel series have been used in China earlier. Basically all electronic majors in colleges and universities offer related courses, and even many large companies often write that they require the use of PROTEL when recruiting electronic design talents. Altium once claimed that 73% of engineers and 80% of electronic engineering-related students in China are using the solutions provided by it, but the current genuine rate is only about 3%. Of course, e-works is also deeply saddened by the shocking piracy problem. It is true that no better circumvention solution has been found yet, but it can be seen that the software is widely used in China.

Protel is the PCB design software launched by the PROTEL (now Altium) company in 1985. From the original Protel fo DOS, it was upgraded to Protel for Windows. Then in 1998, the protel 98 was launched, and the epoch-making protel 99 was launched in 1999. Protel 99 se and its upgraded version, Protel DXP was launched in 2002... Since then, Altium has shifted from fixed-point software product release to continuous stream release. Basically, a new version is released every year, and a version named after the Altium Designer+ season is released. The latest version is Altium Designer 10, which was newly released in March 2011.

At present, the number of people who use Protel 99se for PCB design is still huge. Protel 99se's contribution to the PCB design industry is huge. Whether it is the widely used Protel99 or subsequent versions, it provides an integrated design environment, including schematic design and PCB wiring tools, integrated design document management, and support for working group collaborative design functions through the network. Beginning with Protel DXP/DXP2004, it provides a brand-new FPGA design function; starting from Altium Designer 6.0, the design process, integrated PCB design, programmable device (such as FPGA) design and processor-based embedded software development functions Integrate together; since Altium Designer 6.8, 3D PCB visualization and navigation technology has been added. With this function, designers can view the precise molding of the board at any time, and share information with other members of the design team; when Altium Designer 10 is released, And launched Internet-based Altium Vaults and AltiumLive at the same time. Altium Vaults form the core of Altium's intelligent data management technology, which stores and manages electronic design data; AltiumLive is an online environment suitable for downloading, trading and sharing electronic design content.

Of course, some engineers have complaints about the Protel series of software, such as occupying most of the system resources at runtime, high requirements for system configuration, too cumbersome menus, not suitable for high-speed PCB design, less use by companies, especially foreign companies, etc., but because It is the \"first intimate contact\" software of most domestic engineers. There are still quite a few engineers who may have a soft spot for Altium Protel for reasons of nostalgia or preconceivedness, even if Altium has an upgrade. The version will not be changed at will. In short, this is a very good PCB design software suitable for businesses to individuals.