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AdeV:
Phil,

Give DesignSparkPCB a go... I've used it & liked it a lot - waaay easier than Eagle IMHO. I hadn't heard of ExpressPCB, but I believe there's a few out there which are tied to a PCB production house - not a bad idea actually, for the PCB companies...

philf:
Having spent too many hours installing and trying several different PCB packages I've found one which I think does everything I need without a prolonged learning curve.

Ade/Rob - I tried Design Spark and and PCB Wizard - neither of which were ideal. PCB Wizard was much easier to use than Design Spark but I couldn't neatly connect a pad to a copper plane. However hard I tried I couldn't get Design Spark to give me 0.5mm isolation to match my cutter.

I've installed Dip Trace as a 'not for profit' user and they emailed me a registration code. The free version is limited to 500 pins and 2 layers but that's fine for me. It took quite a while to draw my PCB but I'm happy with the result.

It looks as though with all the packages I've tried you can skip the schematic stage and go straight to the PCB stage which suits me for something so simple.





Now to check out Gerber to g-code conversion.

Phil.

philf:
FlatCAM seems a very able Gerber to g-code program although a bit strange to use.

I loaded the Gerber file produced by DipTrace, mirrored it and generated a path:



and then generated the g-code which simulated the milling:



I might thicken up the tracks a bit then try milling.

Phil.

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