Bob Lunn
07/23/97 02:06 PM


> The DOS based autotrax is, well, satisfactory at best.
> As someone else said, they stopped supporting it years
> ago, and this shows up mostly in the video driver area
> - it seems to stop in the standard (not SVGA) area of
> EGA. Sure, there are some specially written drivers for
> old boards, but nothing remotely up to date, like PCI
> cards.   If they'd gone the extra step and produced a
> VESA driver...

     Well, I've used Autotrax for DOS for ten years now.
     I've laid out some very complex boards using fine
     pitch surface mount components, as well as 'standard'
     through-hole (but still complex) boards.

     I've *not* done multi-layer boards.  Nor do I bother
     with the auto-router (though I sometimes use the
     auto-router in 'manual' mode).

     As well, I use Autotrax to do all my schematics and
     engineering drawings (I've created quite extensive
     libraries of the necessary symbols).

     I have found Autotrax to be convenient, fast, and
     easy to use for my purposes.

     With regard to video drivers.  My copy of Autotrax
     has a perfectly good SVGA driver that has worked
     inside a DOS box under Windows 3.11 on every
     computer I have used over the past five years.
     This includes Pentiums with PCI video cards.

     The only complaint I've had about Autotrax was
     the 'crippled' output to printers (as compared to
     the high quality output to plotters).  I've overcome
     this by using a shareware package that converts
     HPGL to direct printer output.

     On a laser printer the result is camera-ready copy.

___Bob