I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who responded and who
put up with this thread, which I guess has been repeated on
occasion :-)

On the basis of what was said here, on my available budget, and
on information from other newsgroups and sources, I decided to
get a copy of the standard version of CadSoft Eagle. Four layers
and 6"x4" boards is plenty enough for what I want to do. The
availability of both a scripting language and a programming
language, the ability to decode the parts library and modify
them for parts that are similar, and their apparent
responsiveness to users suggested to me that it was at least
possible to make up for any immediate shortcomings in the
product. I couldn't find any newsgroup or message list traffic
that complained about general bugginess in Eagle, or any
suggestion that it produced invalid or unusable results. The
most damming complaints that I could find were that (a) the
parts libraries were poorly documented and difficult to
navigate, and (b) many people report that products costing
between five and five hundred times as much as Eagle were found
to have better parts support, better interfaces, greater
capabilities and/or were more widely used in the industry. I've
been tinkering with it for a few days and am so far quite
satisfied.

Thanks again,
--Bob

On Monday, November 30, 1998 5:12 AM, Caisson
[SMTP:caisson@TELEBYTE.NL] wrote:
> > Van: Bob Drzyzgula <bob@drzyzgula.org>
> > Aan: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> > Onderwerp: Re: Professional PCB Schematics NOT shareware
> > Datum: zondag 29 november 1998 4:22
>
> Hello Bob,
>
> > On the low end of all this, does anyone have experience with
> > Electronics
> > Workbench Layout?
>
> EWB -layout is actual the UltiBoard layout package.  I've got
> experience
> with it, and I cannot say I'm happy with it (That's an
> understatement !).