Re: gEDA-user: A couple o' questions

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Apr 8, 2006, at 12:30 PM, John Luciani wrote:

> On 4/8/06, John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Well, I certainly don't think it useful to clutter up schematics with
> > such things. An unconnected pin speaks for itself, doesn't need help.
>
> An unconnected pin could be intentional or a mistake.

Any connection or lack thereof may be intentional or a mistake. No  
special reason to single out unconnected pins.

> In Orcad there
> was a light gray x that was used to indicate an unconnected pin. It
> did not clutter the schematic but did
> indicate the designer's intention.
>
> On large projects and projects with multiple developers we found it  
> useful.

Such measures may ameliorate the scaling difficulties of big  
projects. But inflicting them on small ones is a bad idea: you tend  
to turn them needlessly into big ones. This kind of thing run amok is  
one reason that NASA cost formulas predict a cost of $50 million to  
prepare a brick to be launched into orbit.

I'm more interested in using the leverage of EDA to avoid the need  
for a big team.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
jpd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx