Hi,
My next university project is going to be Java based. We will have to develop this with Swing and I was wondering what's the common preference for that?
A quick glimpse through Netbeans website and I could see a powerful Swing editor, or what it looks like one; since I never used it, I don't know. As for Eclipse, I'm sure there are plugins for Swing, but are they any good? How do they compare to Netbeans?
The bottom line is, should I go with Netbeans or Eclipse for a Swing based project?
There are a lot of questions like these. You can look around for more.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1126779/building-a-gui-in-java
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2353964/best-way-to-build-java-swing-gui
Related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/623692/handcode-gui-or-use-gui-designer-tool
If you really want to learn Swing, and especially layouts, then do not use GUI Builders. BorderLayout, BoxLayout, and enough time will build you almost any GUI you want. In this case it does not matter whether you use NetBeans or Eclipse. I personally don't like Eclipse because of the way they do auto-completion. But is's up to you. Plus, professors like to ask you to write code by hand on the exam, so you'd better know how to do that.
If you are going to create a rather simple application, I would recommend you handcode it. Learning GridBagLayout is not difficult. And as a university student, this is the best way to go.
If you really want to go for a GUI builder, go with NetBeans. The Eclipse VE project was very good, but is kind of dead. There is also the visualswing4eclipse but it is (IMHO) not even in stable state. Personally I have faced a lot of difficulties in building even a medium complex UI. It sometimes overwrites its own code. Also it uses a own implementation of GroupLayout and not the JDK one.
(I am a hardcore eclipse fan, but eclipse GUI editors - the free ones (I have not tried any non-free ones) are very disappointing.