[sdiy] Altrium Designer/Protel / Proteus

[Seb Francis]

Tom Arnold wrote:
> My list of criteria isnt exactly extensive, its just my shortlist of complaints
> that have driven me nuts in the past. :-)
>   


Well, having done quite a lot of stuff with Proteus (v5.2) I can say 
that I've never encountered a limitation that can't be worked around 
without too much fuss.  I will say that the auto-placement and 
auto-routing is pretty rubbish (can't speak for later versions or for 
Electra), but I much prefer to do all this by hand anyway.

One feature I really missed (which I believe exists in Protel DXP) is 
the ability to route a track at an exact spacing from an adjacent track, 
following all the bends, etc.  This is really useful when you're running 
a bus of tracks and trying to use the minimum space.  With Proteus 
(v5.2) you have to watch the mouse coordinate display and manually space 
the tracks exactly right (again, maybe they improved this by now?).

Seb