Professional PCB design

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Eagle CAD is fine. Small boards can be done with the free version. or You can try it for free. $500 and $1000 for the full version.
It is easy to get $20000 in software. I have seen software at many times that.

If you search this forum you will find this question many times.
 
Electro-Tech is certainly the King when it comes to people asking vague questions. Ya, it really depends on what you mean by Professional. There are certainly commercial products made with PCB design software like Eagle, but for companies that have teams with complex jobs and budgets, it's usually the bigger ones like Altium, PADS...
 
PCB Tools today are very good, even free ones. I prefer design spark PCB.
Wether or not the design is professional depends on the skill and experience
of the designer, not necessarily the tool.
 
Some PCB makers will take the CAD files from eagle cad. Send one file.

All cad programs make gerber files. All PCB makers use gerber files. Gerber is the common link.

Making gerber files is a little complicated and errors can happen. You have a file for each layer. (top, bottom, 1,2,3,4) Two file for silks (top, bottom) Two files for solder mask (top, bottom). A file for drills. A file for board size and shape. And more file if you are doing something complicated.
 
OSH Park, was DorkBotPDX, accepts the eagle .brd file. They have a nice system that shows you what the top and bottom the your board will look like prior to placing the order.

The sell you 3 copies of your board for $5 sq inch. So you get 3 copies of a 2 sq inch board for $10. I can not waste my time etching and drilling for that and you get plated through holes etc etc. Got to love it!
 
For me: Altium. Hands down. It's messy and complicated, but once you get the hang of it... I used a "full version" one though. Not a rich dude.
 
I use Cadence Allegro for complex boards and Cadsoft Eagle for smaller projects. The pros tend to use products from Cadence, Mentor Graphics or Altium because these products often allow larger teams of engineers to work on one project and they integrate with a set of software tools beyond just layout. Tools that complete what they often refer to as the "design flow" such as circuit synthesis, circuit analyzers and simulators, independent library managers, and factory assembly and test tools are often available from the same vendor as the pcb layout package provider.
 
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