Pete, I guess I've had trouble with the Benchmark in the past because I don't really get the point of what they are benchmarking. All the winners and placers are very complex boards, but why did they win? Complexity? Passing RF tests? Functionality in the field? Ease of fabrication relative to complexity? Ease of assembly? Time frame start-to-finish vs. pin and layer counts? these are the things I care about as a designer. Maybe I just don't read the benchmarking articles well enough. I use the tools I must use for a given job, for a given customer. The technical and procedural articles in PCDMAG I pay close attention to, but a benchmark won't help me when I am told "Customer X wants his schematic created using Tool Y and the board done using Tool Z". OK, fine. I am conversant in many tools and programming languages. Maybe if I was in sales or purchasing the benchmarks would mean more, but how many EDA salesmen and/or buyers (i.e. the guy who actually approves the P.O.) read PCDMAG? I wonder. Jay DeKing EMA Mid-Atlantic, Inc. (716)334-2970 voice (716)334-3481 fax [log in to unmask] ############################################################## IPC Designers Council Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE DESIGNERCOUNCIL <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF DESIGNERCOUNCIL ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. For the technical support contact Dmitriy Sklyar at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.311 ##############################################################