Published by McCAD™ on 2024-08-26
PCB-ST Lite Overview
What is PCB-ST Lite? McCAD PCB-ST Lite is a free, net list driven, integrated PCB layout design environment for small projects. It offers powerful design and edit tools, full forward and backward annotation, and intelligent features such as auto via insertion, design rule checking, dynamic place, auto ground plane creation, and auto thermal dispersion. Additional support tools are available separately. The project limits are controlled by the memory allocations available to the editing buffers, allowing for designs up to about 150 pins depending on complexity. Users can upgrade to the PCB-ST SE500 Educational version for larger designs.
1. McCAD PCB-ST Lite is net list driven and supports full forward and backward annotation of all net and component attributes passed to and from our McCAD Schematics Lite (available separately).
2. PCB-ST contains many intelligent features such as auto via insertion, design rule checking, dynamic place, auto ground plane creation, and auto thermal dispersion.
3. For the PCB-ST Lite series this means up to about 150 pins depending upon the design complexity.
4. PCB-ST Lite project limits are controlled by the memory allocations available to the editing buffers.
5. McCAD PCB-ST Lite is the scholastic edition of the McCAD Pro Series.
6. It is an integrated PCB layout design environment for the board designer who does layout work and requires the availability of powerful design and edit tools at his fingertips.
7. You can move to the PCB-ST SE500 Educational version (available separately) should you decide that you need more capability.
8. Additional support tools are available separately from the developer's site which can be added to simplify the design process.
9. In the PCB-ST SE500 you can tackle designs up to the size of the original Microsoft I Replica computer.
10. This FREE download version is fully functional for small projects.
11. This FREE download is capable of doing small projects.
Download and Install PCB-ST Lite - PC
Download for PC - server 1 -->Intel, 64-bit processor, OS X 10.7 or later.
Compactible OS list:Yes. The app is 100 percent (100%) safe to download and Install. Our download links are from safe sources and are frequently virus scanned to protect you
Not intuitive and old
This is not good software. It’s got all the features you need, but it’s not intuitive at all. You need to have the manual at your side at all times. It’s filled with screenshots from Windows os 4 and instructions for floppy drives, so it’s not that reliable. There’s undocumented weirdness that may have you talking to tech support (why do they have money to pay for tech support but no money to pay for quality software development to make useful software that doesn’t require it?). The lite version limits you to design “complexity”, but it’s not really complexity, the guys on the phone will explain to you implementation details of the software (Oh my. I’m an SDE. That’s bad.) in order for you to make a successful project. Which is to say that you need to build as much into library objects as possible because it works around the lazily implemented Lite version complexity limitation. And that itself is actually a hack, using the software how it was not intended to be used. So much for the educational purpose of it. By the way, speaking of which, don’t pay for the education upgrade, because it doesn’t increase the complexity limit by even one component. There are other pieces of software like this - Sibelius comes to mind. It’s made by people that know a ton about what the software can create, but not a lot about making software. Features just end up put in weird places. Get this - in order to set a font size, you have to hold option when you click the edit menu in order for the menu option to appear. What would MS Word look like with features like that? The McCAD website is still from the 90’s. And look, in the 90’s, there was a lot of software like this. But it’s time to change or move on. There’s no forum or other documentation. Theoretically, if you used this for dozens of projects, you’d learn it and be fine. Until you go on vacation and forget. I will use something else for my next PCB design.
Pretty good tool
Beats everything I have tried before. Comes with huge footprint library and I can easily add more. Very intuitive.
Not compatable
This version (3.1.11) is not currently compatable with OS 10.15-1
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