Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site uw-beaver
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac
From: info-mac@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: Douglas Electronics Program
Message-ID: <499@uw-beaver>
Date: Thu, 24-Jan-85 04:20:14 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.499
Posted: Thu Jan 24 04:20:14 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 05:38:55 EST
Sender: daemon@uw-beaver
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 39

From: tektronix!hplabs!hpda!dmsd!bass@uw-beaver.arpa

I have been using the PC Cad program for about 2 weeks tring to do a
6 X 11" single board micro layout.  The program is a GREAT start at
a PC CAD tool for the MAC. But I use the word START more strongly
than you might observe .... after talking with management at DE ... they
have several development efforts underway for improvements requested
by Bishop .... they expect BG to market the program in the $200-$300
range with the plotter and interchange file stuff added. That will
be a REAL Bargin.

Now the the bad parts ... the program uses VERY poor update algorithms
for redrawing the screen, handling windows, and doing scrolling ... and
is impossibly SLOW. A 4 X 9 memory array tightly interconnected requires
more than several seconds to redraw ... and since layout requires zooming
in on a small section of the board and any movement redraws the screen ...
every action with that many objects takes 6-10 seconds minimum.

When I talked to DE about the problem they responded that they hadn't intended
it to be used for such large designs .... I would guess that a 10 to 20
chip board is about the practical limit untill the next release ... unless
you have a lot of time to spend waiting for it to redraw.

Besides the problem of it not being useful for real product sized boards ..
25-45 chip boards ... its only other problems are VERY MINOR glitchs
like tring to grab the scroll boxes sometimes causes it to jump when
you close the mouse button (like it thought the pointer was not over
a box).

Since the problems should be easy to fix I would give them an A+ on
overall design and effort and an A- on implementation.

Waiting the the next release from BG ...

John
--- 
John Bass
DMS Design (System Performance and Arch Consultants)
{dual,fortune,idi,hpda}!dmsd!bass     (408) 996-0557