On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:33 PM, a r wrote: > On Jan 7, 2008 10:48 PM, Peter Clifton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 22:41 +0000, a r wrote: >> >>> Well, last time I tried gschem it didn't work for me. It had no >>> hierarchical circuit support, no ready to use components, no >>> auto-numbered instances. It was slow to redraw and its wire editing >>> mode was only slightly better than drawing them in a general purpose >>> vector graphics editor. >> >> I'm guessing this was some while ago you used gschem. > > It was one year ago. I'm occasionally checking the progress by reading > this group but I can't help feeling that the direction of the gschem > development is orthogonal (or even opposite) to my needs. In > particular, it focus too much on PCB,
I've done two successful ASIC designs and used three PC board layout programs (but not PCB!) with gEDA. From where I sit, this radical flexibility is gEDA's greatest feature. > it has no design database, An advantage for reuse of design components. > it > has only "light" components. I don't think proponents of "heavy" components have a clue what they're really asking for. Consider that typing "resistor" into Digi- Key's search engine gets you 250,000 hits. And then, some connector families have billions of variations. > >> It does hierarchy, although I'm not entirely sure how it is used in >> relation to spice. > > No, it is not gschem that does the hierarchy, it is its user. Gschem > does not (did not) do any hierarchical design checking, hierarchy > configuration, hierarchical parameters, copying, renaming, > highlighting nets, etc. Hmm, I've done a couple of 6000 transistor ASIC designs with gEDA. Couldn't have done that without hierarchy. gschem is a fine tool here. But remember, gEDA is a toolbox with nice tools that play well with other tools. gschem is not a Swiss Army knife that attempts to do everything. You use the gEDA tools together with your file utils, makefiles, documentation tools, simulation tools, etc. That's real flexibility and capability. > >> It has had many rounds of drawing fixes recently, and does indeed >> ship >> basic symbols ready for use. > > Last time I checked, redrawing a simple schematic was taking almost 1 > second. I wonder how much longer would it take with a real design. Anything you can actually read on the screen is almost instantaneous. I break things down into simple modules anyway, so it's not an issue to me. > As > for basic symbols, they had many irrelevant parameters (footprint etc) > and none of important ones (these had to be typed manually as a spice > card template). One project's irrelevancy is another's requirement. That's why serious gEDA users have their own libraries of specialized "heavy" symbols. But we each have our own needs: a general library of heavy symbols would be unwieldy. > > Say I have a MOS transistor instance on schematic. When I open the > properties dialog of this instance, I expect to see a drop-list of > available model types/levels, along with a list of text fields where I > can define parameters that are relevant to the selected model > type/level. All parameters should accept expressions so that I could > automate editing and verification of the design a bit. Eh? You're going to get models from third parties: they cannot generally be legally distributed with gEDA. You're not going to want to change most parameters. > >> Auto numbering has been added (as a dialog >> for renumbering components), and I think there is also an option >> to have >> on-the-fly numbering of new components. > > I meant on-the-fly numbering. Possibly I missed this feature but why > it was not enabled in the first place? Because most of us don't want it, maybe. > >> If there are areas where gschem shows bugs, or can't do something you >> need, please let us know. It isn't good for the project (and open >> source >> tools as a whole) if people are left with bad impressions of the >> software, but don't make any feedback known. > > In general, I don't like giving negative feedback. Especially if I can > clearly see that the project is targeting completely different or > opposite goals than mine. > > Regards, > > -r. > > > _______________________________________________ > geda-user mailing list > geda-user@moria.seul.org > http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user