"Marra" wrote in message
...
I suspect a lot of these old and free PCB CAD packages are not taking
full advantage of the current PC hardware.

Possibly true, although I can comment that "PCB Artist" which is the free PCB
package Advanced Circuits has wouldn't fall into that category: It's really a
version of EasyPC (from Number One Systems / WestDev) in disguise, and quite
sophisticated.

PC's have bags of memory now so the old pin limited packages are out
of date.

Pin limiting has, in the past decade or so, always been a means of
artificially restricting users based on how much they were willing to pay for
a license and has nothing to do with not taking advantage of the hardware.

Things like vast processing power can be done to do things like auto
placing of components.

I've yet to see an auto-placer that's worth using, but I'd admit that I
haven't used yours.

In my software I also added right click context menus which are very
user friendly.

Most Windows software did this around 1995-2000...

(Of course, there's still overpriced stuff like PADS out there that TO THIS
VERY DAY cannot be installed in a directory that has a space in its names...
like, oh, say, c:\program files...)

---Joel