> Evidently you have had the same problems with Eagle as me - many of the
> commands are counter-intuitive, and compared to some older software
(DOS,
> not windoze), it's dreadful!  The only thing in its' favour is price!

Eagle, like any complex software, has its quirks and share of dubious
design decisions.  However on the whole I think it is a reasonable package
for what it is trying to do.  It is a LOT easier to learn than other PCB
software I've looked at, and generally does a decent job.

My main wish list for Eagle includes:

1 - Allow packages, symbols, and devices to come from different libraries.
In other words, I'd like to make a library of packages, for example, then
reference that from all other libraries that contain symbols and parts.

2 - Allow alternate symbols within the same device.  For example, most of
the time I'd like to show an NPN transistor with the base on the left,
collector on top, and emitter on the bottom.  Sometimes I might want to
show the same transistor with the base on the right.  Eagle forces you to
create a separate part for that.

3 - Add several (an unlimited number) of user definable fields to each
device.  These would be useful for exporting a bill of materials with
vendor names, manufacturer names, internal part numbers, etc.

> I (and some collegues) have been working on an open-source PCB designer,
and
> have been trying to avoid all the pitfalls that we've seen with other
PCB
> software.

It would take *many* man years just to get where Eagle is now, which is
available for only the price of a few man-days.

> The "learning curve" with most seems to be excessively high.....
> Since it's an open-source project, it's ONLY written for X-windows.  A
> version will be on Sunsite in the immediate future.

I guess another advantage of Eagle then is that it runs on Windows.


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