The previous EE wasn't big on software or the layout person? In any case, the person who's not big on software oughta be fired. We don't do drafted schematics and rubylith layouts any more for a reason.



Some thoughts:

a) tossing a run of PCBs because you chose the cheapest "tools" is false economy.

b) forcing (hopefully) well-paid engineers and layout people to jump through hoops (spend more time doing something) because you chose the cheapest "tools" is false economy.

c) choose a schematic tool whose netlist output is compatible with whatever the layout people use. No human intervention should be used to get the netlist in shape for layout.

d) choose a schematic tool that can accept a back-annotated netlist. For example, after completing a layout, I like to re-do the ref deses such that they're geographic (this makes trying to find something on the board reasonably easy), so after changing the ref deses you have to back-annotate this to the schematic.

e) Libraries are your friends.

-a