Hi Jim, for many years (over 20) I have used protel (now altium) autotrax- not that I am recommending it to you, but it is a very simple and intuitive program to use and I base my opinion of all the others on it. All the more modern ones I have tried are, for the most part, from fairly, to extremely, counter-intuitive. Until I came across Target 3001. http://server.ibfriedrich.com/wiki/ibfwikien/index.php?title=Main_Page It took me only a an hour or so to produce my first board with the free version using the autorouter and schematic capture, which for me is a very short learning curve! What I was also impressed with is the 3d image of the board which you can rotate to check component clearances, etc. Like Bruce, I persevered with eagle for a while, even got some boards out if, but it was bloody hard work, and about as counter-intuitive as they come so I gave up on that. Having said all that, load 'em all on your machine and have a play- different strokes for different folks. On 2012-02-24 11:38, Jim Hickstein wrote: > What do people use these days for schematic capture (and just possibly PCB layout), for > low-budget homebrew stuff? It's been so long since I did this, I still own a T-square and > a pile of contemporary relics like rules and triangles. I'll get out my pencil sharpener > if I have to. But really, this must be a solved problem by now. For less than $300? I only > need TTL, not striplines or any black magic like that. -- Cheers, Ken vk7krj@users.tasmanet.com.au www.vk7krj.com 'It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods .... is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.' (Einstein's famous quote on Quantum theory)