Buy all of your equipment from major manufacturers and you can hardly go wrong. Get your RF equipment from Rohde & Schwarz, especially high frequency signal generators and spectrum analyzers. Get your scope, meters and logic analyzer from Tektronix. Get most of the rest from Agilent. You will really have to better define the type of work you plan to do, however. For example, if you plan to work with cellular telephone equipment you will need a lot of specialized instruments just for that, but if not most of it would be useless. The cost of specialized equipment is higher than that of more mundane machines.
For planning purposes you might want to make a list of parameters associated with equipment you expect to be working with. For each record the frequencies, bandwidth and other functional parameters required. How many lines on your logic analyzer are you likely to require, and what depth memory? Do you want to have diagnostic and repair equipment or will your lab be devoted exclusively to R&D? Don't answer too quickly, because you may on occasion encounter a malfunctioning reference assembly, for example, and if you can fix it yourself it could save several days compared with sending it out for repair, or starting over with a replacement. When you complete the list it should be fairly easy to see what additional equipment you will need.
If you're unsure what you will need for some or all of it, contact sales people for the companies you plan to buy equipment from. The major companies generally give solid advice, because they would like you to buy from them again in the future. They will come to your location and arrange to demonstrate equipment for you. Of course you will still have to do your homework to evaluate their proposals.
For workbenches you will probably want to get standard height with a shelf running the full width of each and cabinets underneath. Chairs with armrests will be needed, and they should be adjustable height to suit your workbenches. Plan on lots of 48" florescent lights, good metal cabinets for storage and file cabinets for documents and drawings. A computer on each bench is not too many. You might want to look at a decent sized UPS system if it will be important that you keep some or all of the equipment running without interruption.
I think you will find that the sky's the limit when it comes to buying test and measuring equipment. You could easily order so much that you wouldn't have a place to put it all, then never use most of it. IMO there is no substitute for analyzing the work you plan to do, then match it up with the available instrumentation.
My overall advice is to buy what you know you will need before you begin working in your lab. Then you can easily add additional pieces as the need arises.
Good Luck! --NR
