I can’t nelieve how quickly thinking about DxDesigner got me irritated and ranty...., Sorry!
Once you have a bad experience with software.....it can boil to near rage. I have a long list of rotten experiences with big $$ professional software that is crap. The vendors go-to solution is always to 'upgrade' to the next level for a pile of cash. Never seems to work.
Yeah that was always the problem I found. They won't talk to you until you've upgraded to the latest version but then even if they do agree it's a bug, you likely won't see a fix for a long time. As for feature requests, rather than the developers taking each idea they see on its own merit and deciding whether to implement it, you just get told to "suggest it on the Mentor Ideas website" and you put it there, amongst the literally thousands of other suggestions where it may pick up a few votes until it drops off the first few pages because there are so many suggestions coming in, then it no longer gets seen because people only read the first page or two so no more upvotes and then your out of luck....
I have been a Solidworks owner since 1998 - it just works. They are always improving. A couple of bumps here and there, but overall - amazing. I want that same experience for PCB design. Eagle is so close....yet so far.
Have you registered on the Autodesk EAGLE forums and posted your suggestions for EAGLE improvements over there? The developers and senior management are quite active on that forum as well as Jorge and Ed who always respond to suggestions made there. I've seen a number of things that have been suggested there make it into one of the Autodesk releases so they are listening and acting upon suggestions now.
Subtle things I have noticed (among many) just in an hour.....
Hovering over a net highlights the whole net so you get a visual cue of what your routing needs to do. You can lock 45's and verticals super simple. Exported a STEP file (no random ULP) that went directly into SolidWorks so I could work out the heatsink based on MOSFET locations.
I think Autodesk are concentrating on getting the EAGLE<->Fusion360 integration to be their primary MCAD integration. Once you get a board into Fusion360 though I'm sure you can export it as STEP at this point if you want to go into SolidWorks. I would be happier if the 3D model of the board was created in EAGLE directly by adding STEP files for components and having a 3D view there which could then be exported to Fusion360 for inclusion into a larger mechanical design or alternatively STEP to go elsewhere. I'm hoping it'll move more in that direction.
As for diff-pair routing.....still learning obviously. I was able to route easy enough, the setup is easy. The routing is much easier to control overall. Still trying to figure out how to edit/modify a diff-pair afterward. Seems to default to moving a single track although both tracks in the pair are highlighted.
Yes, the diff pair routing does need some work to make it a polished feature in EAGLE. It could be made less fiddly to draw the pairs in but I think the largest issues are caused when you need to make a change. It's sometimes easier to rip up and re-route. I'm pretty sure they will fix the issues with this though, it seems like quite a major improvement as diff pair routing is quite an important thing for a lot of people.
For now, I had to put it away and get back to work. The boards I am working on now are fairly simple, so no major rush. Back to high-speed stuff in a couple of weeks.
I could do with a few simple boards, my last few have been quite challenging.... 0.5mm BGA's with dual stacked micro-vias, gigabit Ethernet, lots of impedance matching and length matched nets, etc and of course I had crazy deadlines and people harassing and asking me how it was going every 5 minutes!!
Best Regards,
Rachael