I've spent the last week or so learning how to drive Design Spark, the freebie PCB software package from RS.

After a few days trying to reprogram it so it worked like my old PCB package the light started to dawn and I am now unprogramming it This is a neat piece of kit, the price is right but I don't think it will put the other PCB design software houses out of business as it stands.

The more I use it, the more I like it, but there was a bit of hair tearing early on because the manual is a bit basic, the tutorial videos avoid all the tricky bits, it has a few interesting quirks and support is limited.

RS have decided that their suppliers have to do the component footprints and schematics. This does mean you can find yourself with a row of SOIC-16's all with different foot prints and legends. Fortunately the component library editor makes it easy to reassign components to a single footprint of your chosing.

The component libraries don't exactly cover the entire RS catalogue although they will let you access it to find stuff. I can't say I have had much luck finding the parts I want. I suppose the idea is that you lay your board with RS parts and then press the Buy It Now button and get the full kit, but they are not there yet. This PCB-Shopping combination has the unfortunate side effect that they want a specific manufacturers part number for each component. The component names are gibberish. When you come to your first 0805 10k resistor expect to search for 10 minutes, mutter a bit, curse their black hearts to a good spell in purgatory then discover the is a generic library which will do exactly what you want after a bit of jiggery pokery.

I couldn't find my microprocessor, even though RS stock it. A quick web search took me to a site called NeatInfo and they did have it.

I gave up looking for the micro SD card holder and had a good rant at the screen as I tried to draw my own. I eventually went to the DS forum to ask what on earth was meant by an "Invalid handle error", nobody knew. Eventually figured ot that it meant I had drawn a pad wider than it was tall. I have to specify it 90 degrees out then rotate it.

Are you getting the idea? The Design Spark package is all singing and dancing, but you can only learn it by trial and error. If you have a week to spare, stock up on Prozac and give it a go. If you can get past the initial frustration you will eventuallly come to like it and start discovering some really neat features.