PCB Design for the Mac

**lucyyenic** · 02-02-2010, 10:22 AM

I've checked the useful links sticky (quite a few of the schematic editor links seem dead, btw) and googled around, abd the only Mac based software I can find is Eagle. The problem is, Eagle is not very intuitive to a noob like me.

Does anyone know of free / shareware native Mac Schematic & PCB editor, that is actually easy to use and doesn't require a week's worth of training to use?

**Cheater** · 02-02-2010, 07:07 PM

Eagle is very good. I'm on Linux.

What parts are you having trouble with?
The schematic part is fairly straight forward. Place part, join it with lines.
The board editor has a few subtleties.

I'm not sure if KiCad is available on Mac or not.

**Entropy** · 02-02-2010, 08:04 PM

I don't think there's a free/shareware solution for ANY platform that meets your criteria.

All of the PCB/schematic layout programs suck. Fritzing is SUPPOSED to be easier to use, but it is still under heavy development and is missing a lot of the features of other packages.

**dmcole** · 02-02-2010, 10:18 PM

Yes, I too have had trouble learning Eagle on the Mac. But then, as I say in my sig, I'm not an engineer (I don't even play one on TV).

Fritzing (http://www.fritzing.org/) is going to be the one, eventually, specifically because of its breadboard view: you'll be able to build a circuit on screen as though you were building a breadboard (or, I guess ideally, you'd build on-screen and on a real breadboard at the same time), which can then be automagically become a schematic and, in turn, a PCB layout.

Unfortunately, though, right now you build a breadboard on screen and it makes a messy schematic that takes hours to correct and fix. I haven't even tried a PCB layout.

But it's going to be great, someday.

\dmc

**mrpackethead** · 02-02-2010, 10:56 PM

I use Eagle on Mac, and have moved up from teh free version to the pay version, but even the free version is awesome..

yes, its got some 'odd' ways of doing things, but no more than any other of the pcb software i've used in the past..

Theres a really good set of tutorials at Sparkfun taking you through all the basics you need. Highly recommened.. I was going in a couple of hours with those.

**ctmal** · 04-29-2014, 06:17 PM

Apparently Kicad is available for the mac:
http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/KICAD/Download

**dmcole** · 04-29-2014, 07:22 PM

Resurrecting a four-year-old thread ...

I switched over to Diptrace and have drawn many circuits with it and a few boards. It runs in some funky X11/Wine thingamajig but once you remember that you need to use Windows shortcuts (CTRL rather than CMD), it's fine.

The only downside is the limited nature of the pre-drawn components, but it's easy enough to find the spec sheet on an item and draw the component from that.

\dmc

**tweist** · 04-30-2014, 11:30 AM

I to run Diptrace on my Mac. works great and creating custom components is not that hard.
I like using Diptrace because I can draw the schematic first, then attach it to the layout and make sure I have not forgotten anything.
I used Diptrace to create and layout the new Renzilla controller. Works great

**Matt_Edwards** · 04-30-2014, 05:38 PM

Have a look at Easy eda. It looks good. http://easyeda.com/

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**Matt_Edwards** · 04-30-2014, 06:12 PM

They do private projects too. And the librarys are amazing. But you are forever locked into their eco system as the exporting doesn't allow you to go back to another package.

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