Re: gEDA-user: Power (and other non-graphical) pins

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 13, 2009, at 5:12 PM, r wrote:

> Believe it or not, gEDA actually strongly focuses on the PCB flow.

It supports PCB flow, but it's not intended to be focused on any  
specific application. That is part of its strength. I've designed  
ASICs with it, so it's hardly restricted to PCB.

> Just look at the symbol attributes - pin numbers, footprints, even
> reference designators come in PCB flavor.

You can use anything you want for a reference designator. It needs  
PCB-centric attributes for a PCB flow, but in an ASIC flow you don't  
need to use them.

> There is only partial
> support for the design hierarchy,

The problem with design hierarchy is that it supports a variety of  
downstream flows, and these don't seem to have a common way to do  
hierarchy. So we have a couple of different ways to do hierarchy  
(gschem-style, SPICE-style) with some knobs on them. That's the cost  
of flexibility.

> partial support for libraries,

I see no limitation. I am increasingly reusing design fragments.  
That's a gEDA strength if you organize your flow to make it easy. And  
you are free to do so.

> partial support for other types of design data (RTL, netlists),

Well, the AWK script I posted awhile back to merge in pinlists is  
pretty simple. Maybe I'll tidy it up and submit it to Ales. A key  
strength of gEDA is its simple, well documented file formats, which  
make it easy to do things like this with a few minutes of scripting.

> no
> functional netlisters,

Eh? One of gEDA's strengths is its ability to export netlists to a  
radically wide variety of of other tools.

> no DRC checks on the design.

drc2?

> These issues can
> often be "fixed" using external tools (makefiles, own netlisters and
> rule checkers) but they are enough to discourage most designers from
> even trying the tool.

gEDA is a flexible toolkit, not an inflexible integrated tool. It  
gives you the freedom to adapt to your processes, not enforcing any  
narrow point of view on the designer.

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




_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user