Homebrew PCBs

Markus Zingg wrote:
> You guys made me curious. I downloaded and tried Diptrace out (went 
> through the tutorial etc.). I do not agree that it is soooo user 
> friendly compared to Eagle (as strange as this may sounds). Don't get 
> this wrong. It's truly ok for the money but for instance, I particularly 
> find it clumsey to assign values to parts and make this visible in the 
> schematic entry program. You really have to go through too many mouse 
> clicks for such a frequent operation. I liked some other features though 
> (i.e. some more intelligence moving around parts that are already have 
> connections etc.). What I also miss (ok, might be that I just don't know 
> how to do it) is the ability to enter purchase department oriented 
> information for parts. I'm not totally fluent in english, so please bear 
> with me when I now try to explain what I mean with more words than 
> otherwise needed. Anyways, from personal experience I just know that 
> having the information ready to actually order parts for a production 
> run of a design is a painfull, time consuming process. I expect from a 
> modern CAD package some support here. Like being able to define 
> (multiple) suppliers for a part, entering price per quantity 
> information, datasheet URLs etc. etc. and having a process thereafter 
> that allows to make intelligent orders. Eagle has solved this with a ULP 
> (but IMHO that should be part of the base product but that's a 
> discussion we had already in the past).
>
> What I also miss is a similar feature like the ULPs in Eagle. Well, one 
> should be able to "add" individual functionality to a package as it's 
> possible with Eagle. Diptrace does have the ASCII export feature which 
> could be used to modify the database and reimport, but that seems a 
> little complicated let alone the fact that the data format does not seem 
> to be documented (as oposed to Eagle). Doing layout work also is not as 
> easy as it is in Eagle.
>
> However, I DO like the fact though that this seems to be a competition 
> for Eagle and I would recommend the package to someone looking for a 
> good package on a budget. Besides it seems to be a relatively new 
> product, so we may will see progress in the future.
>
> Just my 2\ufffd of course.
>
> Markus
>
>
>   
Markus,
  I hope the more experienced people answer this as I am just a beginner 
at this so my needs are quite minimal at the present time. This is more 
of a hobby for me. Single sided boards with less than 250 pins (for now 
anyhow) and NEVER more than a 2-sided board. Maybe once I learn my way 
around I will see what you mean and then I can use Eagle but for now it 
looks like DipTrace will get me etching boards quicker.
My 2 cents :)
Dave