Good morning (day, night, ...) respected PICList
 passengers as well as not-less respected PICList crew
 and even more not-less respected PICList  holder. :-)

    I have a question: How many man-hours would it
 take to "home-brew"  some simple  PCB layout program
 under MS Office or more precisely under MS Visio?

    MS Visio can draw schematics, I tried. I hope, there
 are parts libraries somewhere on the Net for Visio.

    It could draw a board, I think, provided there were
 appropriate "shapes" (MS Office term). Anyway, there
 are tools for creating these shapes.

    These shapes could easily be organized into
 collections (MS VB(A) term) accordingly to usual
 PCB layout layers. So you could show / hide needed
 layers.

    Autorouter also is not a big problem (I hope).
 My linear optimizer has been working for years.
 The math idea should work with the autorouter too.

    After been finished, the layout could be printed from
 MS Office directly to PCB.  By that time, there is
 a chance, The Black Alchemist (In a good sense. :o)
 will reveal The Big Secret Of The Ink, we are waiting
 anxiously.

    Dreaming up further (or farther - don't know: my
 poor English is my pain), one could expect all the
 libraries be placed on the PICList site as well as
 VBA code, so one could start with downloading
 shortest MS Office Visio file with some macros that
 would do the rest: download only those components
 that are needed for this particular PCB layout
 application.

   Mike.

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList
mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu