My main task generally ends with schematics and simulations. I concern myself with these software tools matters only because my clients often ask me to do that. I'd like to find a "standard" free package, and maybe the subject package is a candidate, for us to use as a standard on 8052.COM, just so we can share schematics in a non-graphic format, since the schematic files are often much smaller than the graphics. I know that's true of the DOS-OrCAD schematics.

Perhaps once in ten jobs do I have to deal with PCB's.

I had to procure bEAGLE because my client was fooled into buying it, largely because he thought, erroneously, that the autorouter that did a really decent, and quick job with a small business-card sized board with four all imperial-unit parts would do as well with a postcard-size board with a dozen components with mixed imperial and metric dimensions. It did not! It took over two weeks to route that board, requiring 6 layers and then required extensive hand-editing in order to make it reasonable for production. When the output was fed to Electra, it took only a bout 5 seconds to fix it though we didn't discover that until the boards had been made. Ultimately, we used OrCAD and Allegro to do the job right.

In a sense, you could say I have no use for any of the CAE packages I have in house, aside from the one I primarily use for schematics. However, I still have to have the packages that my clients use.

Actually, it would be more realistic to say that the full-up bEAGLE is worth negative $1500, i.e. they should pay you to waste your time using it. After all, one has to dedicate extensive additional resources in order to produce a professional result within this life, and it requires between 10 and 50 times the manpower required by other, some no/low-cost, software just to get the job done.

RE