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

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:33 PM, a r wrote:

> 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,

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




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