At 04:13 PM 10/7/99 -0500, Karl J. Bates wrote:
>Chris,
>        4 of 5 PCB Top gun winners so far have used Veribest, 1 used Accel.
>There were designers using Cadence and Mentor there also.    I've used
>Cadence and Mentor, unfortunately I haven't tried Veribest yet.
>See this site to see the contests.
>
>http://www.pcbshows.com/topgun

I'm sure that Mr. Bates did not intend to create any misleading
impressions, but the Top Gun contest tests designers, primarily, not CAD
systems. It's also interesting to note that there have been two contests so
far. The second was sponsored by Praegitzer Industries and Veribest; there
were eight participants, of which four used Veribest,  2 used Cadence, 1
used Mentor, and 1 used, apparently, a service bureau's proprietary system.
All three winners were Veribest users. The first contest had five
participants, of which two used Cadence, one Mentor, one Accel, and one
Veribest. The two winners used Accel and Veribest.

The announcements of the winners don't even mention what CAD system they
used, you have to look down a little farther. It's pretty clear that this
is a contest between designers, not CAD systems. Obviously, if a designer
chose to use a system that did not work, he or she would have trouble; but
most of the contest has to do with design knowledge; speed does not seem to
be much of an issue; the participants were given one and one-half days to
complete the design, and while the design details are not found on the web
site, it does not appear to be a difficult design. The board design itself
is only 50% of the scoring; the remainder is based on a written test and a
personal interview.

I don't think anything can be concluded about the relative merits of the
CAD systems involved (or not represented) from these contest results.

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Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433