Hello...

Go try "Autotrax EDA" it,s free for home use! nice program!

Even if it has got a Windows-compliant user interface and an integrated
simulation module, I really don't like that product I have bought a few
months ago (discount on the full version for $95) to get rid of the pad
number limitation :
- it's still in development, with many features not yet implemented and
frequent crashes blocking the OS
- it relies on graphical API functions not supported on W98, preventing
reuse of components downloaded from the Internet sharing system and saved
into your database, and preventing the mirror printing feature
- when trying to select with the mouse a graphical object covered by other
ones, there is no advanced mechanism to select one of your choice (even the
"send to back" feature doesn't change the priority for object selection)
- The most horrible is the router because the copper lines or their vertices
are not treated as real objects and cannot be manipulated as easily as
components can (for example you can't select a block of vertices or full
lines and move them as a whole), you have sometimes to draw many times over
already routed copper lines to reach the pad where the electrical link ends,
the default trace width resets to an unwanted value, the vector optimization
merges two aligned copper lines even if they aren't on the same side etc...

To conclude this, I really prefer EAGLE even if the user interface isn't
Windows-compliant (especially the non obvious copy/paste manipulations)
because it's really efficient where I found lacks in AutoTRAX. And the only
limits for the free version of it is to place all your component pads in a
10cm*8cm board area (and one-sheet schematics, but of unlimited size). For
bigger boards (10cm*16cm) in non-commercial projects, the non-profit license
costs $125.

Dennis



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Thierry C.
Pour m'écrire, enlever les mots "spam" et "sucks" de mon adresse E-Mail