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  • Author Author: embeddedguy
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PCB designing with Autodesk Fusion 360

embeddedguy

Most of us who like to make PCBs are familiar with Eagle CAD drawing software. I started using EAGLE when it was taught in my university during my bachelors degree. At that time I did not even realize that PCB designing skills would be very useful to me in the future even after years of passing out.

But some time ago Autodesk announce that it will discontinue EAGLE from somewhere in the mid of 2027. That was a bit shocking news for me who used EAGLE to design some PCBs.

But recently I gave found that Autodesk Fusion 360 for personal use is cloud-based development platform also to design PCBs, with similar features as EAGLE has. It is free to use for personal use and has limited features. BTW the full feature version comes at $ 85/month or $ 768/year plan.

For now, I just give it a try to Fusion for personal user. Here is a 2-layer PCB layout design. I personally found Fusion 360 for PCB easy to use and it has some nice features that helps developer to create complex PCB. 

What do you think? Let me know in the comments,

image

  • in reply to ariajames_121

    Hi,

    The experience was pretty good. There are still some improvements that might be possible. Also, note that the free version only has upto 2-layer boards support. So in that case KiCad or similar open source software would be a better choice. Nevertheless, using Autodesk 360 is easier.

  • It is really interesting to hear about your experience with Fusion 360 I can imagine the shift from EAGLE must have been a bit challenging at first but it is great that you are finding it easy to use The fact that it integrates PCB design with mechanical modeling sounds like a big advantage How has your overall experience been so far compared to EAGLE.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Thank you for this nice feedback. I will make some improvements on note

  • in reply to embeddedguy

    (Mobile so I can't type much).

    The issue is this bit:

    "On the bottom layer there is entire GND plane that is from the pin on the SoC to the Antenna".

    Although there is copper there as you say, it doesn't actually connect to the IC except after having gone further around the board hopping between vias, until it reaches a single via near the top-left of the IC (I colored that in green in an earlier comment). Via holes under the IC will help with that (they were not present in the Gerber files I looked at.).  It needs to connect very close to the RF trace, instead of having to go around the board as mentioned.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Ok. Let me clarify that thing again.  So, on the top layer I have GND plane around the track that leads to the ANT. As the below.(N$15 till N$6) is the track.

    image

    On the bottom layer there is entire GND plane that is from the pin on the SoC to the Antenna. As below for the same track.

    image

    Is there anything that I am missing here? I understand that these separate planes are connected to each other with tracks and VIAs as well.

    For the SoC pad that is also connected using Vias to the bottom GND layer as pointed by you in the dev kits and also as seen in above pictures, when I try to do that there is a error of Overlap (SMD-VIA). I need to find the workaround for that.