Being a software guy I know how easy it would be to make considerable usability improvements with little effort which makes it all the more frustrating – I first came across DT about four years ago and I have to say its not really moved on from then, and that is even more frustrating. I have used it (schematic capture) to create a project and it does work once you get to understand its oddities. If you are used to using Windows or Mac UI’s and you have not had any CAD experience then DT will feel alien and it has a long learning curve to get you past that. DT reacts strangely to the mouse mostly so while people seem to think its intuitive I can only imagine other packages must really be bad. I have to say at this point, I don’t much like CAD software, it all seems to have “its own way” of working, seemingly much of this is a hangover from Autocad which was made before a mouse was even commonplace, so lots of strange keyboard shortcuts etc. It would have been better to improve the software so it never needed an option to “recover” anything… They have added this at some point I imagine to deal with the fact that the software is buggy and can crash/hang. In terms of the hanging, they have actually added a menu option called “Recover Schematic” which mostly gets back your last changes.
If you have a Mac, install Oracle’s virtual box, run a copy of Windows 7 and use it as a native Windows app (I am going to give DipTrace one more try under Windows to see how I go). So if you are going to use Diptrace, use it on Windows not a MAC. The software also randomly hangs which causes work to be lost, the UI is slow and cumbersome and the keyboard shortcuts sometimes stop working so you are restricted to right-mouse context menus for cut/copy/paste delete until they magically come back from time to time. Novram should be ashamed of their claims of OSX support, its really terrible. Integration into the Mac is non-existent, files and folder structures are ten folders deep as the WINE emulator creates a Windows-like folder structure. Trust me, the thing is crappy, actually bad enough that I want to use it in Windows instead, which is tearing me away from my beloved MAC.
Worse than that, WINE runs under Quarts X11 which is yet another layer of abstraction before it hits the actual screen. But on OSX its actually running the Windows version of the software under a windows emulator called WINE. They claim it runs on Windows and OSX which is true.
Perhaps the EDA/CAD world has lower expectations that I do but even Diptrace which would appear to be the more intuitive of the bunch, the user interface, and more specifically the usability really sucks, it could be Sooooooooo much better.įirst of all, Mac OSX support. Why am I looking at options? Having read numerous forums and reviews, based on other peoples experience it would appear that Diptrace is an improvement over Eagle and other low end solutions, I have tried Eagle In the past and I would have to agree, but Diptrace far from perfect, in fact its so poor in some areas I am now thinking about sinking time into evaluating other applications. I have recently been using Diptrace for schematic capture and have just hit the 300 pin limit so I am looking at my options including alternative packages.