PCB and Mechanical Design
Mechanical
- Surveys of various free Mechanical CAD:
- Fusion360: The online version is super bare-bone, recommend setting up a VM with GPU passthrough, free for hobbyist use,
the one to use. - FreeCAD: FOSS but seems fairly immature and has weird workflow.
- OnShape: Very similar to Solidworks and also fully online, not sure how stable it is though.
- Fusion360: The online version is super bare-bone, recommend setting up a VM with GPU passthrough, free for hobbyist use,
PCB
- Surveys of various free Electrical CAD:
- KiCAD: FOSS and got some pretty big investments,
the one to use. - Eagle: Heard their pricing tiers have gotten really complicated so the free tier is even more stripped down, but probably use it if designing enclosure in conjunction with Fusion360.
- CircuitStudio and Upverter: Both fully online CAD by Altium, they honestly kind of compete against each other. Show that Altium strategy is lacking focus.
- KiCAD: FOSS and got some pretty big investments,
- KiCad Push and Shove Router
- CadLab for visual diff on PCB
Concepts
PCB CheckList
- No GND Loops
- As big as possible GND plane: Help improve signal integrity.
- This list of GND plane best practices
- Make sure board thickness fits the application
PCB Milling
While this is certainly convenient and capable of SMD, milling tends to be a mess and FR4(PCB material) contains fiberclass that while not cancerous is also not good for your lungs so milling PCB requires a fair amount of safety equipment and space. The toolchain flow is also complicated and not very polished, double sided PCB is a pain. Recommend to not do this.
Both
- ECAD and MCAD Integration: Allow syncing between pcbs and enclosures design, Fusion360 and Eagle, KiCad Stepup and FreeCAD