Derek, I like you posts but every other one is about how you like DipTrace.
OK, I will tone down my posts. I just try to convey that this is one of the quickest pcb packages to learn & master.
I worked with Diptrace and it is nowhere close to Altium although I wish it did. If it was, Diptrace would be way more successful.
Most (many) people on this forum are generally looking for a cheaper option than Altium's US$8K+
I am the first to admit that Altium gives you so many options, there is generally nothing you can't do with it. It does have however a large learning curve & it is quite (very) complex in some areas like scripting. Even moving from a schematic to the pcb can cause you to pull your hair out overcoming all mismatches that Altium keeps complaining about.
There are also (Diptrace) problems and quirks reported years ago which have never been addressed. Instead, there is new length tuning feature which users of DipTrace don't need.
I agree on both counts, however in these past 2 years the development team has worked hard in overcoming some of these long held complaints.
Diptrace is OK for hobby but far away from being a professional mid-range EDA tool.
How complex your boards are?
I can do pretty much everything I want/need to do using DipTrace. The boards I design usually fall into the 50 to 200 component range. Most boards are designed using micro-controllers to reduce the parts count.
To manufacture boards in a high cost country such as Australia, you must work hard at your designs to minimise the component count which in turn (nomally) reduces production costs. We own our own plastic moulds to keep our box/enclosure costs down & mainly V groove our boards so that we can handle large panels through the production phase economically. This means that most of our boards are rectangular in shape.
So, no we are not into flex or hybrid boards & our designs generally run under 50MHz.
One would envisage that if you were into PC motherboard design that you might well choose a package like Altium, not that I don't believe I couldn't do it in DipTrace.
Anyway, your points are taken on-board & I will take more of a backseat on this forum.