There is a pure online pcb Design Tool: Circuit Maker
a Cloud Tool von Altium, Australia.
But there are some restrictions CircuitMaker - Wikipedia
Maybe it’s a way to go if you want to share hardware designs.
But Thorfire, like almost all budget brands, is not very good in drivers.
Hence Narsil Q8 driver is crown jewel 
Another possibility is that they want the raw layout so they can shrink it for use in other lights. Although after seeing what they did with the hack job of a driver they made I am not holding my breath, that was the old team though, maybe the new one is better!
I was actually just gonna recommend circuit maker when I saw the talk about pcb programs. I haven’t used eagle but I’ve heard that it’s much worse than circuit maker
Interesting circuit maker, do that also allow you to design PCB’s? That is the thing we really need here, the circuits for our designs don’t vary all that much really.
Yes, it should really be called “PCB Maker”. As far as I know that’s all you can do with Circuit Maker
Yes to PCBs I believe. I looked at a blog from their site (http://circuitmaker.com/blog/#Blogs/using-templates-for-streamlined-manufacturing) and they talked about several manufacturers that can take info from their software.
If any vendors can be fed a complete file of PCB,parts list, and placement code (I think I also saw a reference about placing), we (well, you guys anyway; this is above my pay grade) could insure compliance with the design.
If any vendors can do pricing acceptable to Thorfire, maybe we could have some made for us and then let the process continue to mass production with Thorfire.
An alternate thought: We are looking at probably more than 1000 units. That is a small number, but could yield some decent component and board prices. Placing/inserting parts should be fairly simple for this fairly simple device. Loading firmware - ? The software site is maker oriented, so those manufacturers may be happy in relatively small quantities. We could let Thorfire build the rest of the assembly and put in whatever they want for their product. Then sell us the units less the electronics. If assembly is not a real bear, we could see if a significant portion of the BLF people wanting one of these would be OK with relatively simple assembly. After all, real men (and phototropic women) build their own flashlights. And those women not into construction will be in awe of our skills.
A few problems with that proposal.
First off you assume everyone on BLF wants to, or can build a torch. BLF members will demand the factory finished product sent out to them - with the BLF internals. I sure will.
Second, many members are not in the USA - myself included and that would require sourcing the internals separately - no thanks.
Third, when this goes ahead the manufacturer will not want to knob around making half a light, pull production, then knob around and make complete lights.
Then there is the problem of having 2 completely different versions of the Q8 out there - one version with genuine BLF designed parts (put together by god knows who, and no warranty), another god-knows-what-thorfire-will-put-in-it potential disaster.
Not to sound rude but that will kill any chance we have of thorfire giving BLF exactly what we want.
If they are wanting design access to the driver, it’s already a slim chance we’ll get exactly what we want.
There’s got to be a way to get them to stick with what our guys have proven out. A lot of work has gone into this driver, it would be a pity to see it go the way of Manker. I was using Bistro for almost a year before production lights hit our hands, imagine how it felt to have issues with something I already knew worked flawlessly? I was even asked to provide an exact component list to Manker so they could nail it, they didn’t use the list. I was building Quad X5’s from prototypes with my own hand built drivers, seeing over 3000 lumens from an 14500 cell. I even built an aluminum X5 Quad and sent it to Neal, which they disassembled and used to design the Manker S41 Quad, which falls well short in the lumens department somehow.
I’ve been on that end of the stick all I care to be, thank you very much! We here know what works, Tom E perfected the Narsil with help from some top guys, no need to muck around with it and ruin it!
I’m in the group buy based on this driver of Tom’s. If that’s not what’s going into the light, I’m afraid I’ll have to drop out. Thorfire’s efforts to build the host are indeed impressive, but if I have to build my own driver I’ll use the SupFire M6 as a host instead.
Don’t forget PD68, he is the one that did all the actual PCB layout.
Nooooo, hoping they'll stick with a ATtiny85/Narsil, if not I think I'd drop out 
. The ThorFire engineer who perpetrated the re-design of the driver is no longer there, so we are starting with a clean slate of a team. The engineer said our design was not manufacture-able, a term I hear @work at times by the fabrication guys as it applies to mechanical designs, but we had no explanation as to why, and now probably never will. It's a whole new ball game with the new team, so I'm hoping we'll know more up front before any rash decisions are made. I know engineering costs there are pennies on the US dollar, but still I hate to see such wasted efforts as what apparently happened. I've been speculating the problem was cost - the ATMEL Attiny85 had a recent major cost increase at our US distributors, so think'n an extra $1 or $2 is a major cost increase for a $40 retail shipped product. In the real world, your costs should be about 20-35% at most of retail, but with this deal, it's gotta be much higher - the costs of the 4 XPL's alone is huge, even in high volumes.
If some how they can miraculously duplicate the functionality, hopefully just porting the code, to a cheaper MCU, might be ok, but I'd love to know what that MCU is. For those of us wanting to re-program it, we would probably have to replace the driver then.
Yes - Narsil is a culmination of several developers, ToyKeeper very much included - I'm directly using her ramping table generator, for example, to create the ramping levels to begin with. The mode sets came from earlier versions, probably from JonnyC, than tweaked with the "Werner" UI method, than I added my own tweaks such as 1 click OFF. The configuration UI I developed on my own, but it may operate similar to others. The ramping evolved right here from several BLFers providing some good input early on in this thread. Actually ramping was added as a direct result of input here.
I for one have zero issue with paying $42 for a light with the Atmel ATTiny85 MCU. No problem whatsoever. Even $45 if need be. Get it right, that’s the main thing. A few dollars to guarantee it’s to our spec, non-issue.
(shhhh! don’t tell em, but I think it’s too cheap for what it is, would pay $55 or $60 to be honest… come on now! Be realistic. Price 4 emitters. Price a copper MCPCB that will hold 4 emitters. Price a lens, a host, switch and switch board. Not gonna touch that package for $40! What does an aftermarket SRK driver cost? $20? More? Yeah, see what I mean? The emitters and driver cost more than this whole light if we’re buying aftermarket!)
I said it very early in this thread, but I never thought $40 was a reasonable price point for the sort of light this set out to be. I mean I’d love to be proved wrong, but I haven’t been yet.
And yes I would also pay more (within reason) to have it. I signed up for the light, not the price. Sometimes I think this forum sets itself up for issues by demanding the best performance for the least price. Sometimes the best deal means paying a few bucks more up front to avoid paying quite a bit more to “fix” it later. Charge more if you must, but make it right, please.
+1
My 2 cents on cost….
I have an M6 Supfire from mtnelectronics, with the mod 1 upgrade (improved firmware). I believe I paid close to $60 for it and thought that was a great deal. $40 for the Q8 I have seen in these videos is a genuine steal. It would still be a great deal at $60. Sure I would like to pay as little as I could for the Q8, but people in China have to eat too.
The M6 is a good comparison really. RMM is selling them for $40 and you know he is making a profit.
What we are building here should not cost any more then that, except for 1 extra LED, to make. Thus selling it for the same price with 800 people signed up to buy it is actually quite reasonable IMHO.
Not liking the look of this…
I’ve been resisting the attraction of some of the monster flooders which have hit the market recently, not sure I’ll be able to resist if I start to feel this is going to go the way of the cometa…
I hope you’re right. Really, I do. I just don’t want to see corners cut to meet what’s really an arbitrary price point. As long as its done right, I’m happy 
Yes for now agree with TA!
Tuesday usually is adaythorfire emails and is active.
I will open up Skype and see if wecan get any info!