Here's my related experience and opinions addressing your question:


We have PowerPCB 1.5.1 for Windows. I haven't been impressed with it. For a
Windows program, and PCB CAD program, not very intuitive. A good friend,
PADS power user,  told me there are major bugs in that version.  That didn't
bother me so much as it doesn't produce RS-274-X, embedded apr gerber data .
This is crucial for us here. Also, it does not have split plane DRC support
 - another important issue. I am not an everyday user of PowerPCB, but the
bottom line is that it cannot do a few important specific things that are,
in my environment, mandatory. I haven't found it easy to learn, doesn't
follow Windows standard menu/keystroke convention, but that's a minor issue.
All I would need is more time. Feature is the bottom line though.

The tool I recently chose over the others is Orcad Layout, 7.1 is shipping
right now. Good competitive pricing and it comes with a gerber editor/viewer
and mechanical CAD package. It works great with Orcad generated netlist and
has ECO tracability to keep sch and pcb in sync. 7.1 has split plane tech
and  creates rs-274-x gerber data. Layout user interface still has much room
for improvement, but what software doesn't? Layout also works in my
environment because it some reliable capabilities of reading other CAD data,
in my case, P-CAD and PADS. It currently doesn't follow Windows
menu/keystroke convention but they are working on that in the next couple
releases. This also, is not as easy to learn, the concept, I think is quite
different. Once I got it, and couple of days later, I consider myself a
power user of Orcad layout. I think has the most bang for the buck.

I am also a licensed user ACCEL EDA. It is the easiest to learn of the three
and has the important features I need in a layout package. The tutorial is
very good for learning the basics of how EDA was intended to be used. The
next release will have better manual routing capability. It also comes with
a programming package, DBX, for writing your own applications for EDA data
manipulation and extraction. Gerber viewer is also built in. ECO capable
with its own sch capture, split-plane tech.

Of the 3, I recommend Orcad or ACCEL EDA. Make sure you address all of your
needs now and future, demo them, then choose. Please take it for what this
might be worth -- electrons an wire from one computer to another.

Any pentium class with 32megs and a Windows graphics accelerator is a must
with a min of 2-4 gigs of hard-drive space is what I recommend hardware
wise.

Good luck

Scott Shepard
CIDCO
Opinions are not necessarily that of my employer.

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