Matt Redmond wrote:
> 1.  If I hand someone a schematic, how much might I expect to pay to
> have the board designed?  Cheap is good - I wish I could find a
> talented hobbyist or student to do this for me...

You are right, the best thing would be to find a hobbyist, friend, or
student that has a CAD system and can do this on the side.  If you think you
will do this again, you might consider getting the free or low cost version
of Eagle and learn to do this yourself.

I can give you some idea what it would take to get this done commercially:

This is a nightmare job for a commercial outfit.  No matter how "cheap"
someone will do this, you will probably think it's too expensive.  That
means you will probably waste more of their time than usual in wanting every
penny justified, and they will be wondering if you'll ever pay them.  The
small size of the job makes the extra hand holding proportionately worse.

The small job size also means the extra overhead in getting into and out of
the job is more significant than with a small job.  Then there is the issue
of what happens if it doesn't work.  You aren't paying to have the schematic
looked over, but will naturally assume the board is at fault when things
don't work.  This means extra wasted time to the commercial house to argue
about whos fault it is and spend time proving the board matches the
schematic.

Let's add some numbers.  Assume your schematic is drawn neatly and
understandably.  However, you don't have package information.  Figure a
couple of hours to look over the schematic, verify it makes sense (to avoid
problems later), determine if any unusual packages are required, get a feel
for whether it will fit within your board area, etc.  Figure at least half a
day chasing down mechanical information for unusual connectors and the like,
adding their definition to the CAD system, and entering the schematic.  At
least another 1/2 day for routing, checking the gerber files, sending them
to the board house, receiving the boards.  Add the overhead of all the hand
holding required, getting into and out of this job, and it will take at
least two days assuming not a large number of part not previouly in the CAD
system.  Even at $95/hour engineering rate, plus $120 for 3-5 prototype
boards, that would be over $1,600.  And that's an estimate, not a guaranteed
fixed price.  This is actually quite cheap from a commercial job, but
probably way past your definition of "cheap".

Unless you make it clear that you are prepared to pay up to $2000, no
commercial place that knows what they are doing is going to touch this job.
Even then, the fact that you are dumping an existing schematic on them will
make most commericial places walk away.  There are too many potential
problems that are just not worth the trouble and aggrevation for two days of
billable time.


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