Re: gEDA-user: gEDA just hit SlashDotOrg

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob Paddock wrote:
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/01/2114210/Cheap-Cross-Platform-Electronic-Circuit-Simulation-Software?from=rss
> 
> "Cheap, Cross-Platform Electronic Circuit Simulation Software?
> 
> dv82 writes "I teach circuits and electronics at the undergraduate
> level, and have been using the free student demo version of OrCad for
> schematic capture and simulation because (a) it comes with the
> textbook and (b) it's powerful enough for the job. Unfortunately OrCad
> runs only under Windows, and students increasingly are switching to
> Mac (and some Linux netbooks). Wine and its variants will not run
> OrCad, and I don't wish to require students to purchase Windows and
> run with a VM. The only production-quality cross-platform CAD tool I
> have found so far is McCad, but its demo version is so limited in
> total allowed nets that it can't even run a basic opamp circuit with a
> realistic 741 opamp model. gEDA is friendly to everything BUT Windows,
> and is nowhere near as refined as OrCad. I would like students to be
> able to run the software on their laptops without a network
> connection, which eliminates more options. Any suggestions?""
>

well, quite frankly.... if this is a sort of intro to electronics class 
with a first view of simulation, I think he should just be using a 
simulator and skip the schematic capture.  Knowing how to work with 
netlists is pretty darn valuable even if you primarily use schematic 
capture or even synthesis tools down the road.  It's not a matter of if, 
it is a matter of when you end up needing to look at the netlist to 
understand what the tools have done to you.

Its not as if the netlists involved with these types of courses are 
terribly large.

The other option is if things are getting large to the point of it 
really honestly being counter productive to just use a netlist, then 
windows users do have the gschem under cygwin option.




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