That doesn't really make sense... In the professional world - an engineer's time costs money. The figure I've heard is that an engineer typically costs their company around $1K/day once you factor in everything (salary, benefits, non-technical support staff, etc.). So let's say one ECAD program costs $10K while another is free, but the free one slows the engineer by 10% After working for 5 months with the free program, the slow program has already cost the company $10K.rdpzycho:
Eagle may not be suitable for complex professional works…it will just take more time…but for companies, or self employed professionals with products that doesn’t have to deal with too much fine pitched ICs, ball grid ones then Eagle is a good software for the price (or even the free one)…our company and I belong to this category…
the bigger companies with the bigger products that use complicated ICs will always have a shorter lead time for the designer requiring a quicker time to market…that is where the high end suites come in with all the features which take into consideration all factors in rapid development…some PCB design companies even have proprietary softwares that suit their style of routing and designing (and most use Linux)…though, doing that will surely need a budget much more than $3000 on programmer hours…
I would guess I’m 50% faster or so with AD then I am with Eagle, and I spent a whole lot more time with Eagle than I have now with AD. Remember that you also have all the down time where you just have to learn the ECAD program. A completely non-intuitive program further costs the money due to the extended learning period.
But all this goes out the window for the hobbyist.