Hello Rolf,
Some time ago, when only workstation had enough computing power I was trained on Mentor Graphics. I was not a great fan of it, at all. Than for different smaller projects and to be faster with development I used Orcad. When Orcad run under DOS it was outstanding at that time. As some people on the boards wrote several times, the newer Orcad versions are not that great anymore and people said, that parts of the tool still run with patches in DOS background. Agreed, Eagle it is easy to use and straight forward, but as most projects have something special on the board, e.g. special IC, cut out, mechanical integration, unique routing I found, that Eagle has limitation. For simpler projects it is good and with the evaluation level not bad. But particularly, when you change something on the screen and it does not come out the way you draw it this can be frustrating. You play for a long time until you found out what it is or you give up.
This is in my humble opinion the beauty of TARGET3001. The IBF companies philosophy is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). And that is really true. Also having good CAD drawing function can be sometimes very helpful. You are right, there are more elements which can be modified for the user and as with any program you need to go through the learning process. But once you know the right mouse clicks, short cuts the tool is enormous efficient. The thing for me is I don't want to pay xk $ for a tool and than on top support fees. Target is a good balance between pricing and performance and they keep adding on functions. I like the tool and with the easy gerbering function a nice round up.
Your input on the poor help menu is something you should place on the TARGET forum
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or send an email to IBF ( snipped-for-privacy@ibfriedrich.com). The company is more than happy to get feedback and improve their product. This is important that the tool need to improve with the hardware and software changes. Also if you have technical problems, I found that IBF usually posts an answer within 24 hours and I assume if you email them the same will be true - all for free, what a deal. This kind of service running on a big boy's tool will cost you. Regards, ...richard