Best Tools to Make PCB Design Easier

by | Oct 27, 2016 | Technology Featured

Believe it or not, PCB or printed circuit board is one of the cornerstones of the modern-day technology. The board is the place where different electronic components connect. This means that PCBs are used in literally any piece of smart tech. That is why the world market of PCBs excides $60 million yearly!

Of course, their purpose has a lot to do with the PCB design. A century ago, these boards were made manually. Those days are over. Today, you can use superb software to design printed circuit boards in the shortest amount of time. The problem is finding the right kind of tool, especially because sometimes this kind of software can be quite costly.

How to Choose Good Software for PCB Design?

You might have the skills and knowledge needed to design superb boards, but all of that won’t matter too much unless you have the right tools. The only way to produce a good work is by getting a good PCB software. In order to call a PCB design program good, it has to cover a wide range of things. This software needs to have powerful features, together with intuitive interfaces, so that you can take care of everything, from basic things to more complicated stuff.

Among the features the perfect PCB design software needs to have is a built-in autorouter engine. This feature can significantly reduce the time needed for designing a PCB. All you are required to do is set the rules for placing the interconnections, after which the software will start doing it on its own. Apart from the autorouter, the PCB design program also should have a number of other time-saving features like a mixed-mode simulation engine and a 3D PCB visualization tool.

The best PCB design software should not be only a tool for doing the job fast; it also needs to allow you to be creative. That is exactly why you need to use one that has a content library with a huge number of parts, which will enable you to customize your designs.

CircuitStudio Might Be Your Best Choice

Developed by an Australian company that has been in the business for over 3 decades, Altium’s CircuitStudio is a complex electronic circuit design software that can be extremely helpful, regardless of what kind of design you do. The best thing about this software is that it provides you with a set of schematic editing tools that put you in a total control over the board’s design. These tools include everything from hierarchical multi-sheet design to the SPICE simulation engine.

On top of that, CircuitStudio also comes with a number of other tools, like the autorouter, 3d visualization tool, etc. What makes it even better is that getting it opens you doors to using over 350,000 different parts found in the CicruitStudio library, so you can customize the board any way you like! It comes with a live supply option, meaning that you can order the components you need without any delay.