A good amount of freelancers splurge on Altium because it’s what they already know. Because of that it’s also the package that many new freelance engineers are most familiar. It’s good software, but that’s pretty crazy.Īltium is the most popular PCB design package among those with a company’s budget behind them.

That being said, there are three PCB design packages that are the most popular: Altium, Eagle, and OrCAD.Īltium Designer is considered the Ferrari of PCB design packages and starts at over $7,000! No that is not a typo. It's always a good idea to run all three of these before exporting a PCB to be fabricated.There are numerous software packages available for designing printed circuit boards (PCBs), too many in fact. Then you can run a series of tests from the Verification menu to check your layout for errors.Ĭheck Design Rules ensures no traces, pads, or holes intersect or get too close to each other (or the edge of the board)Ĭheck Net Connectivity ensures that all of the proper connections are madeĬompare to Schematic verifies your layout against your schematic to ensure all components are present and of the correct type (and that all connections match your schematic) This will display ratlines as a guide to ensure you don't accidentally forget a connection (or make an incorrect connection). It's much easier if you draw the schematic first in the Schematic Editor then 'Convert to PCB'. The reason I ask is that you can, of course, just draw the entire PCB from scratch in the PCB editor but it's risky.

For example the two square GND pads on the left have no connection to the three GND pads on the right.ĭid you draw a schematic first in DipTrace, or did you do this all by hand in the PCB editor?

Your ground pads don't have solid connections between them but there are no ratlines indicating broken connections. Do you have a ground plane on the opposite side of the board as well? If not, are your ground net ratlines hidden?

Diptrace pcb layout