[SGVLUG] CAD - circuit diagrams

[Terry Hancock]

juanslayton at dialup4less.com wrote:

>Does anyone know of a good program to draw and print circuit diagrams.  Not PC board layout, just the diagrams.
>
>  
>
IOW "electronic schematic drawing and capture".

One GPL program I found to be pretty cool is xcircuit 
(http://xcircuit.sf.net).

Pro:
    Uses plain old Postscript.  Well actually, very cleverly-coded, compact,
    and highly regular xcircuit subset of Postscript code!

    Output is very visually appealling, xcircuit is a drawing program as
    much as a schematic capture tool.

    Automatically generates netlists.

    Highly programmable and extensible.  For example, I once created special
    "parts" that were actually interactive-fiction "rooms" with the 
wires representing
    connecting doors.  Using the netlister, I was able to get it to 
general an
    XML file representing all of the room connections, which could, in 
principle,
    have been used to automatically code the whole map.  (This was also kind
    of a cool experience, because I worked with the author to test the 
netlister
    code, and some bugs got fixed just to support this project. I never 
actually
    used the auto-generated code, but I may yet, as I'm starting to work 
on the
    same game project again).

Con:
    The GUI interface is frankly klunky, and highly keyboard-centric.  
It bears
     little resemblance to the conventions of any modern drawing or CAD 
tool,
     so you have to learn the xcircuit way of doing things, and that 
makes for a
     fairly steep learning curve.  Once you get used to it, it's not too 
bad, though.
     It compares somewhat favorably to xfig.

    The built-in library is not huge. You may *have* to create parts, 
especially
    if you were hoping for lots of standard IC chips (OTOH, the whole set of
    basic discrete electronics parts are represented, a full complement of
    logic gates, and templates for ICs).

I think it really ought to have an overhaul of the GUI to make it a 
top-flight
program, but I'm not going to be the one to do it, unfortunately.  I 
have the
impression that the guy who wrote it is happy with the GUI the way it is.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com