Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Sorry about the previous post. I got to clicking a bit too fast in Outlook.

I've been evaluating different schematic capture and pcb layout programs for
Windows for the last two months. Of what I've seen, there seem to be three
basic classes of software. (1) Garbage that is not worth the time to
download, (2) limited usability and (3) ridiculously expensive (>$1500).
Several programs fall into the first category (I won't list them for fear of
offending someone's favorite program). There is no need to go into the
third. That leaves the middle category.

Programs like EasyPC are a pleasure to use but are significantly lacking in
functionality. The well thought out user interface allows you to sit down
and actually be productive in a matter of minutes. But limited
functionality keeps you from going too far. At the other end of the scale
is Eagle. Excellent functionality but totally lacking in a functional user
interface. Now before anyone says "You're crazy, Eagle's great you just
need to give it a chance" let me say that I will fully agree with you that
Eagle will do just about everything a home hobbyist and many pro's will
need. BUT, any program that is going to take three weeks of my time just to
figure out how to create new libraries, get them entered into a schematic
and create a board layout is NOT how I define "functional". It may be great
once you know it, but I would rather spend the learning time actually doing
something productive with another program. With EasyPC I was able to figure
all of these things out (as far as the cripleware version would allow) in
under a couple of hours.

So, is there anything out there with the usability of EasyPC and the
functionality of Eagle that doesn't fall into category three that I just
haven't come across yet? What is the closest I can get to both worlds?

What do the people in this group use?