PCB Selection: Kicad, Eagle, WinQcad & Co
Kicad
Kicad is an open source (GPL) software for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed circuit board artwork. Designed and written by Jean-Pierre Charras, a researcher at LIS (Laboratoire des Images et des Signaux) and a teacher in IUT de Saint Martin d'Hères.(France), in the field of electrical engineering and image processing.
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Welcome to Microcad's home page. WinQcad 38.0 is a complete electronics design software running with Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/VISTA operating systems and with Linux under Wine.
WinQcad
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TinyCAD
TinyCAD is a program to help you draw circuit diagrams. It comes complete with symbol libraries to get you started straight away. As well as being able to simply print your designs, you can use TinyCAD to publish your drawings by copying and pasting into a Word document, or saving as a PNG bitmap for the web.
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SprintLayout
With Sprint-Layout you can design your PCB’s quick and easy. There is no unnecessary “ballast” which makes it difficult to keep the overview or which makes the usage almost impossible. Because of the logical and understandable strucure of Sprint-Layout the usage is very easy to learn. So finally, you can concentrate to the essential thing: Designing and optimizing your PCB-layouts.
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Protel
Altium Designer provides electronic designers and engineers with a single, unified application that incorporates all the technologies and capabilities necessary for complete electronic product development.
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PCBelegance

PCB elegance can handle complex designs.
One of the examples is a PC motherboard
2000+ components, 40000+ traces are no problem
OrCAD
The Cadence OrCAD product line includes affordable, high-performance PCB design tools that boost productivity for smaller design teams and individual PCB designers.
MerlinPCB

Merlin PCB Designer is a free printed circuit board (PCB) layout tool that is distributed by Falco Systems. Whether you are professionally involved with printed circuit manufacturing, or you are just making a few PCBs for your job or at home, Merlin PCB Designer can make your life easy and save you a significant part of your PCB-related expenses.
FreePCB

FreePCB is a free, open-source PCB editor for Microsoft Windows, released under the GNU General Public License. It was designed to be easy to learn and easy to use, yet capable of professional-quality work.
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FidoCAD

FidoCAD for Windows is now in version 0.96 beta. Versions 0.9x are characterized by the ability to design and print PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards or printed circuit boards); In addition to two new special primitive (track pitch and electricity) has been introduced a new print mode, the "PCB mode", which allows you to print circuit boards to their natural size.
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Express PCB

Our Free PCB software is a snap to learn and use. For the first time, designing circuit boards is simple for the beginner and efficient for the professional. The ExpressPCB CAD software is very easy to learn and use. For the first time, designing circuit boards is simple for the beginner and efficient for the professional. Best of all, its FREE.
Eagle

The 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.
DipTrace
Are you looking for a professional and easy-to-use PCB Design software with powerful autorouter and reasonable price? Try DipTrace and you will be surprised! DipTrace is a complete state-of-the-art PCB Design System.
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- Ionela's blog
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I used eagle for long time
I used eagle for long time until I got to know KiCad which I found the best and easiest to use... not only that, the graphical user interface I love.
What I really like about kicad is its 3D board reconstruction which gives you a great idea of what your board will look like when you finish it. It helped me to understand some times that the layout I was building was not as comfortable as I needed to be... things you dont see in 2D and have nothing to do with electronics per sé.
KiCAD vs. Eagle
I also have tried both Eagle and KiCAD and personally, I am more comfortable with KiCAD. But the best thing about KiCAD is it’s freeware. Eagle also has a free version, Eagle Light, but with limited features: smaller board area, only two layers possible (top and bottom) and only one sheet can be created by schematic editor. Just in case you started with Eagle and now using KiCAD (or vice versa), there are several conversion applications or libraries available online.
Great
Great resource of information thanks
Kicad is a great workbench
I agree with Diego, Kicad is really a good tool, and it is an open source software (GPL license). I have used both Kicad and Eagle, but I prefer the first one. Its integrated board editor (Pcbnew) is very impressive and I was surprised to see how it can provide a 3-D view of the printed board.
RE: Kicad is a great workbench
KiCAD has many good features. And the best thing is that it appealed to mane open source enthusiasts. There will be soon efforts undergoing to implement and maintain an online component database, including not only library components, but also descriptions, pricing information, voltafe ratings etc.
Regards,
Cristian
A-Flex is BEST for ME ;)
actually i was thinking the same before but when i did research on Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing then i got A-flex.com company which is best in PCB Manufacturing...
http://www.a-flex.com/index.html
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