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I have seen MultiSim+Ultiboard does some good jobs creating single-layer PCB to multi-layers, yet in academic version, it does not do auto placement. Because of this, during autorouting process it ends up with lots of jumper on the circuit. We need manual routing there.

Another software I tried was Altium. It has both auto placement as well as auto router. But while porting to CircuitCAM, it gives us one of the layer completely masked and thus I can not command LPKF machine to do the etching else it will etch out the side completely.

Any suggestion please for a best PCB software that suits LPKF machine? As a learner, we want to start our practice from simple single layer circuit!

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4  
You make it sound like the LPKF machine needs some special kind of Gerber. Any EDA software that produces Gerbers should do the job. – Federico Russo Sep 20 '12 at 11:34
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There are many packages out there. Which one is "best" is a religious discussion. – Olin Lathrop Sep 20 '12 at 11:38
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EaglePCB? I don't use those machines my self but I always send the gerbers from there to various PCB production houses. No problems. – ppumkin Sep 20 '12 at 12:18
thank you all. My point here is that I was not getting much satisfactory results with the two softwares I have mentioned. – Khaaba Sep 20 '12 at 12:32
@Khaaba - From the troubles you describe, it sounds more like user-error then anything else. Also, are you expecting the auto-router to do all the work for you? That's a excellent shortcut to signal integrity issues, and generally poor layout. There are no autorouters on the market that manage anything better then mediocre output, and most of them are pretty frankly terrible. – Connor Wolf Sep 21 '12 at 23:41
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2 Answers

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The Pulsonix software I use has an LPKF output option, which was designed in conjunction with LPKF:

http://www.pulsonix.com/index.asp

http://www.pulsonix.com/industry.asp

Some people in the Pulsonix Users Group seem to be using LPKF machines:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PulsonixUG/msearch?query=LPKF&submit=Search&charset=ISO-8859-1

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Thank you so much. I will give a try. – Khaaba Sep 20 '12 at 12:29
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Eagle (and others) in conjunction with CircuitCam (LPKF) software can be used to generate output for LPKF. CircuitCam also works with other PCB software. It is outlined here:

Eagle PCB -> LPKF Milling Machine Mini-How-To

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