Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
>> Even with EAGLE, we inevitably export our PCBs as gerbers.
>
> I don't, if I can get away with using .brd files directly! My favourite
> board houses do (maybe that is no coincidence).

None of the board houses we work with accept EAGLE files, so we must export 
them to Gerbers for production. I don't think we would send native EAGLE 
files even if our CM accepted them. Ultimately, they would have to convert 
them to gerbers for their machines, and we would have far less control over 
what happens. I like being able to pull the gerbers into a viewer and check 
them for errors.


> I would not minde using
> gerbers so much if I had one eagle button that produced the .zip with
> all files in it.

That *would* be sweet.


>> To me, the #1 factor when deciding which tool to use, is how quickly I 
>> can
>> get the end result. Exporting takes maybe 1 or 2% of the total time 
>> (maybe
>> less, depending on how complex the drawing is). So I use CorelDraw for
>> technical drawings and vector designs, switch to Visio for flowcharts, 
>> and
>> use Illustrator to edit PDFs.
>
> Maybe I am a-typical. I tend to make a lot of small changes, so the
> effort of exporting (in the correct format, to the correct file, maybe
> in another directory) can be significant, and it offers me too much
> opportunities for errors.

I tend to make a lot of small changes too, but you typically make them in 
the native format, and export them to JPEG, WMF, EPS etc when you're done.

Do you work on a computer with multiple monitors?

Vitaliy 

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