Re: gEDA-user: KJWaves - new release (a r)

["a r" <nbs.public@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 7, 2008 10:48 PM, Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx> 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, it has no design database, it
has only "light" components.

> 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.

> 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. 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).

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.

> 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?

> 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.


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