To celebrate CadSoft turning 25, we surveyed engineers involved in the field of PCB design to get a snapshot of the industry trends in 2013. Here we present our findings.

1. CadSoft
25 years of Innovation

2. Celebrating 25 years
• November 2013 marks the 25th
anniversary of CadSoft EAGLE
• To celebrate, we surveyed engineers
involved in the field of PCB design to get a
snapshot of the industry trends in 2013
• Here we present our findings.

3. What did we find?

4. Respondents are fresh faced....
79% of respondents have worked in the
industry for under 10 years

5. ...and largely male...
98% of respondents were male

6. ...and span the globe.
We received responses from 42 different
countries

7. They are targeting a variety of
applications...
80.0%
70.0%
60.0%
50.0%
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
Audio
Video
Control
systems
Open
hardware
Robotics
Energy
harvesting
Lighting
Imaging

8. ...mainly control systems...
A massive 74% are targeting control
systems in their designs

9. ...and open-source hardware
applications...
46% are involved in open hardware

10. ...with many being prolific users
1-3
4-6
7-10
10+
24%
30%
17%
29%
Nearly a quarter work on 10+ designs a
year

11. Why do they choose
CadSoft‘s EAGLE software?

12. They consider functionality as the
key reason...
90
80
70
60
50
Price
Ease of use
40
Functionality/performance
30
Support
20
10
0
Extremely
Important
Important
A little bit
important
Not that
important
Not at all
important

13. ...and know exactly what they
want added next.
87% want improved 73% want an improved
library management
user interface

14. What trends are they
seeing in the
industry?

15. Dev boards are reducing the
need for custom PCB design...
• 64% believe this to be case
– With more than a third believing dev boards have
had an enormous impact.

16. ...and peer-to-peer
communities are important...
• 83% agree this is the case
– A quarter believe they are essential.
– element14 was the most popular forum by far
(45%)

17. ...but that doesn„t mean
they„re using them
Despite
acknowledging the
importance of P2P
communities, 41%
say they are not
active participants

18. Meanwhile the industry is split
over the value of social media
Whilst the majority say they do not value
social channels…

19. Meanwhile the industry is split
over the value of social media
…42% admit they have an influence and use
these channels for design inspiration…

20. Meanwhile the industry is split
over the value of social media
…with only 36% saying they are not
important at all.

21. Meanwhile the industry is split
over the value of social media
This suggests designers are struggling to
filter out the noise on these channels and
focus on following design influencers.

22. 25 years of milestones

23. 25 years of milestones
• As well as surveying our customers, we
wanted to reflect on the history of CadSoft
• We„ve built an interactive timeline to
highlight just how CadSoft and EAGLE
have developed over the years
www.cadsoftusa.com/about-us/

24. Still growing at 3x the industry
rate

25. About CadSoft
Some facts:
• Founded in 1988 in Germany by two engineers
• Headquartered in Pleiskirchen / Germany
•
•
•
•
Development located in Germany
Offices in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; Richfield, Ohio; and Munich, Germany
Strong user base
Acquired by Premier Farnell in 2009 as a key part of its support for the
whole design process
For 25 years CadSoft EAGLE has been satisfying design engineers around
the world by offering the same core functionality as expensive commercial
PCB design software at a fraction of the cost.
www.cadsoftusa.com

26. About EAGLE
•
EAGLE is an acronym and stands for:
Easy Applicable Graphical Layout Editor
…which also works in German:
Einfach Anzuwendender Graphischer Layout Editor
•
Easy, affordable way for customers to implement board designs
–
•
•
•
Makes finding & ordering components faster and easier
Sold as “perpetual” licenses with maintenance & support included
Integrated into element 14
–
–
•
•
one fifth the cost of some competing design solutions
Support forums on “the knode”, parts libraries, PCB service
Connected to the Premier Farnell webshops
One of only few design tools for Mac (also runs on Windows & Linux)
Sold by design modules with multi-seat licensing

27. Image credits
• All images are sourced, with thanks, via
the Wikimedia Commons image library
project, except for:
– Slides 16 & 17, credited to Farnell element14
– Slide 4, credited to Flickr user ‘Meggy’