Re: gEDA-user: Size of symbols

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 29, 2008, at 4:22 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On Oct 29, 2008, at 5:33 PM, John Doty wrote:
>>>>> Should I adjust the size of the symbols or the size of title- 
>>>>> B.sym?
>>>>> What is the correct way and how do I do that?
>>>>
>>>> I would adjust the size of the symbols. The standard symbols seem a
>>>> bit too big
>>>> for me as well.
>>>
>> That's not the paradigm. The way gEDA works is that you keep the
>> symbol size constant in gEDA's arbitrary units, and make the extent
>> of your page what you want to shrink them to the size you want.
>>
>> I personally find title-B about right for letter or A4 paper with the
>> existing symbols. I like modules I can comprehend, not spaghetti
>> going all over the place. I also don't want to give the bifocals too
>> much of a workout ;-)
>>
>> Note that you don't have to use a titleblock at all. Some of my
>> collaborators just put in cvstitleblock-1.sym with no frame, so the
>> schematic just fills whatever page it's printed on.
>
>    I rather despise the new-fangled "plop a component down and attach
> netnames to each of the pins, with no lines going anywhere"
> methodology, if that's what you meant by your spaghetti reference. ;)

No, I meant the opposite, where you have hundreds of long lines on  
the page, requiring extremely careful tracing to figure out where the  
one you're interested goes. I like named nets.

For the CCD focal plane electronics on the Suzaku satellite, I  
dispensed with drawings for the backplane altogether. I just had a  
database of net<->connector pin associations and ground it into the  
netlist form the layout software wanted with an AWK script. Very easy  
to understand and edit. But then I turned it over real engineers (I'm  
just a physicist faking it), and they just *had* to have a drawing.  
To my eyes, it's incomprehensible...

But to each his own.

>
>    What I like to do is have large schematics with small symbols,
> with a title block, and I print them usually at 11"x17".  Would it be
> reasonable to simply use a LARGE title block (say, E size) and scale
> it to fit the page on the way out to the printer?

Yes. That's the approach gschem supports: the paper size you give in  
the print dialog determines the scale of the PS output. I typically  
print a "B" titleblock on "A" paper. Some prefer "C" (screen) to  
"A" (paper). The only unreasonable thing here is that I suspect  
you'll find that people will need a magnifier to read "E" to "B". But  
maybe your readers' eyes are better than mine.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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