[sdiy] Schematic and PCB software

[Thomas Kahn]

I am currently screening the market for electronic design software for
Windows. I have found a couple of programs that seem interesting:

TINA PRO 6 (http://www.tina.com/)

Electronic Design Studio 3.1 (http://www.dotqr.com/)

CircuitMaker (http://www.microcode.com/products/index.html)

I'm leaning towards Electronic Design Studio since it has PCB tools
integrated in the program. It's the most expensive program though.
CircuitMaker has a free student version which is a bit limited, but I
guess it works for the kind of lab projects that I have in mind. Some of
them I might want to make PCB's out of though and there are no PCB
capabilities in CircuitMaker as far as I can see.

TINA PRO seems a bit like CircuitMaker, but I think there are better
measuring tools. I haven't explored this demo that much...

What software are you using? Remember that I'm a beginner and I was
planning on using this software for experiments. (It's cheaper to fry
components on the screen than in real life). ;-)

There is also a program called Edison:

http://www.designsoftware.com/EDISON.HTM

...and eventhough the level seems right for me [room for laughter] it
seems very much geared towards classroom education(?) Has anyone tested
it? Can you do any practical designing with it?

Any pointers and tips are appreciated!

/Thomas

Thomas Kahn
Maaki webbkommunikation
thomas at maaki.com
Tel: 08-545 210 03
Mob: 0704-22 66 44
http://www.maaki.com