Dear all, thank you for all your suggestions, offers, etc. It's enough now! :) To summarize quickly (in the order that I'll try): 1) LASI http://lasihomesite.com/ "LASI (LAyout System for Individuals) is a "general purpose" layout and design system originally intended for integrated circuits." License: Free as in beer, closed source 2) LayoutEditor http://www.layouteditor.net/ "The LayoutEditor is an free GDS Viewer is a program to design and edit layouts for MEMS/IC fabrication." License: partially GPL(?), partially free as in beer, closed source, partially low-cost commercial (different feature sets). 3) LinkCad http://www.linkcad.com/ "thousands of engineers rely on LinkCAD to convert, view and transform their designs, all with a single program" License: commercial, starting from $1000 free 5-day trial version I've left out commercial "full design packages", since that is not what I am looking for. Cheers, Andreas Dr. Andreas K. Huettel Institute for Experimental and Applied Physics University of Regensburg D-93040 Regensburg Germany tel. +49 151 241 67748 (mobile) e-mail mail@akhuettel.de http://www.akhuettel.de/research/