I found Make Your Own PCBs with Eagle by Simon Monk to be a well-written book although I haven’t put it into practice yet.
@ suitable1 - Thanks for the tip I started to read this book as well. It was the reason I was able to create my first PCB.
Sorry, I meant another book I am currently reading. The one you mentioned is not available with my subscription. But I will check on Amazon.
Well the OpenBeta has started; Downloading now.
Yup - got an invite for Altium CircuitMaker yesterday and downloaded it. Looks pretty good so far!
Well Circuit maker looks like a modified version of Altium. All your projects are shared with the world (with no option otherwise). Weird. Methinks that this is a ploy to get content for their main project Altium, by having the community create Altium libraries.
Yup - but if, like me, you were going to do open-source designs anyway (because this is my hobby, not my bread and butter) then that’s more than a fair trade off to get free access to a top-tier tool. If your bread and butter depends on income from designs, then it probably is not the right choice and the license fees are a (deductible) cost of doing business.
@ Mr. John Smith - Yeah, that’s odd. Should be possible to have your private projects as well. Installed it a few days ago. Looks very nice. Usability is great as well.
I’ve installed it myself even though I have and use the full Altium Designer. Seems to work like Altium but the libraries creation is a little different.
As an aside, the attached is a recent design using Altium for a G400 based Data Logger for a downhole pressure and temperature monitoring system. This is used with my 5" CAP touch display. The G400 is awesome for this as the speed makes the graphics nice and smooth. This also have another plug in module, not shown, that interfaces the sensor. There is a GSM modem (SIM5320E) and a heap of 4-20mA inputs, RS485 to communicate with a pump motor controller (VSD) and CAN bus for expansion. USB host is used for data download to USB FLASH disk for system that don’t have GSM coverage.
I recently did an Android based design but it requires a lot of cooling. This G400 based design runs way cooler and I love NETMF for development.
PS. If anyone is interested in any Altium footprints for the G400D, G400S and G120 and other GHI parts, I have a free library available. You are free to use in any project but for commercial use I simply ask for a reference to the source in your documents.
@ Dave McLaughlin - The board looks great I think I will download the trail to test the full version as well.