I'm often thrust into a situation in which someone has found bEAGLE to be tolerable because it is free for the business-card-sized 2-layer board, and believes the "full-up" version to be superior. The full-up version is capable of processing up to 16 layers, on a reasonable sized board, IIRC. However, the schematic capture functions and library management are tolerable ONLY in a free tool to be used by hobbyists who have more time than money to devote to their task.

I've found the way the old DOS-based OrCAD software works to be very satisfactory, and, in most ways quite superior to anything else on the market, in the '80's or today. When I call up a component it appears instantly on the display, and if I don't have a symbol for it, it requires about 5 seconds per pin to enter one. There's no requirement to create a package outline for a component in order to draw a schematic, and, if I want to specify a component outline, there's a separate library used to specify its characteritstics and to which I can link the schematic symbol in the schematic so there's no doubt about what the package is to be. This is very convenient for team-based development because I, as the circuit designer, don't have to concern myself with details best left to the layout person(s) or procurement staff to resolve. Needless to say, this is MY preference, since it minimizes MY work. However, it is also much better suited to a team-based development effort because it allows the management to settle with me once a functional prototype is on the table, complete with documentation.

Software that works in this way is equally suitable for use in situations wherein the circuit designer is also the procurement staff and also prepares the board layout, writes the firmware, etc. Unfortunately, many Windows-based software tools don't work like that. Instead, and it's no just bEAGLE that does this, there's a huge set of libraries, within which components are contained, but until you guess which library is "the one" you might as well build your own symbol. Further, such operations are often performed within a procedure using multilevel menus that take more time using the mouse than it would take to enter the required parameters into, say, a spreadsheet, as some tool sets require. The problem is that much Windows software is written by programmers who have no experience with using similar products and, hence, have no clue what increases productivity and what decreses it. Managers of such efforts also seldom have this experience or knowledge. The result is what we see today.

Cadence bought OrCAD in order to protect its many-times-more-costly products from the clearly superior PC+DOS-based product OrCAD had made available. Likewise, Mentor acquired PADS in order to bring that product under its own control. Cadence bought OrCAD's products and markets the Windows version, which I consider much less productive, under the aegis of EMA. It's still popular, and it's possible to upgrade projects built under the old DOS-based OrCAD tool set to its Windows version, though that's a bit of trouble.

I've had little time to fiddle with the DesignSpark software, but I do find it to be quite typical of Windows-based schematic entry tools, and, I do like it better than bEAGLE, though I've not recently looked at bEAGLE to see whether they have a similar library search feature that allows prompt search from within the schematic entry tool. Moreover, I've been unable, in the 15 minutes or so that I had avaiable to try it, to find out how to create a symbol. I'll find that eventually and then figure out whether it's independent of the PCB package outline creation process.

The reason I'm so disappointed with bEAGLE is that they have a pretty good autorouter, but, while it routes to 100%, it doesn't do it completely to the extent that it requires no post-route editing, and it's slow. If it takes two weeks to route, as I've seen it do with some pretty simple (<10 IC's) circuits on a postcard-sized board, it shouldn't be necessary to modify the schematic symbol just because a package change is required to make the layout work or to respond to changes in availability or cost of components.

The autorouter just doesn't compensate for the problems with the schematic and library-handling portion of bEAGLE. I'm hopeful that this "free" package (DesignSpark) doesn't similarly disappoint in some way or other.

RE