3 Common PCB Design Tools

Excellent PCB design layout can save production costs, which can both make the circuit running well and realize the heat dissipation. Simple design layout can be done manually, but complex design layout often needs the help of PCB tools.

There are three main types of electronic design software in the world.

Protel and Altium Designer

EDA software is the most low-end and basic software. It can only handle two layers. Learning Protel is the basis for learning the high-end PCB software. Now protel has been developed to Altium Designer series, forming a complete board-level electronic design system which includes circuit schematic drawing, analog circuits and digital circuits, multi-layer printed circuit board design, programmable logic device design, chart generation, spreadsheet generation and other functions.

Mentor pads

We also called it powerPCB, is the uncrowned king of the low-end market. It's one of the best and easiest to use in all of the low-end software. The software is used most widely at the market currently, which meets the need of most small-medium enterprises.

Cadence

Cadence is a software company that is specialized in electronic design automation. Its electronic design automation products contain the entire process of electronic design, such as system design, function verification, IC synthesis and layout, analog, mixed signal and RF IC design.

Mentor, Cadence and Zuken has a higher share all over the world, while more people use powerPCB and Protel in China.