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

[Joerg <joergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stefan Salewski wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 14.01.2009, 16:40 -0800 schrieb Joerg:
>> Eagle is IMHO pretty good but it does have one major disadvantage: No 
>> hierarchy support. That pretty much restricts it to smaller projects. To 
>> my surprise Cadsoft has never picked up on suggestions to fix that, 
>> version 5 doesn't have it, maybe their program structure has hemmed them in.
>>
> 
> OK, Eagle is one of the cheapest commercial programs, there are much
> more expensive Tools available, for more than 10000$. These tools must
> have some benefits. Indeed my impression was that not many professionals
> uses Eagle, indeed I was surprised that you are using it.
> 

Well, Windows-OrCad has crashed on me too many times and that ticked me 
off. But what really ticked me off was when they wanted to only sell it 
with a service contract, not without. I saw lots of potential in Eagle 
and was hoping they'd understand that a missing hierarchy is a serious 
market hurdle for them. And then they didn't :-(


> I have worked only with Eagle 4.x for a short time years ago at
> university. I heard that 5.x has not much improvements. Some people say
> that it is good enough and that Cadsoft prefers to earn some money
> without spending much effort in improvement. Eagle is popular because it
> has a limited edition which is available without costs, and works for
> Windows and Linux.  
> 
>> Yeah, but: In medical electronics we listen very, very carefully to 
>> cardiologists when they talk about competitor gear. This is not to copy, 
>> but so we can continually optimize and improve our own products. 
>> Companies that do not engage in such listening tend not to last very 
>> long in the marketplace. It is really important to know what other 
>> groups or organization do wrong and what they do right. And most of all, 
>> to find out why that is the case.
>>
> 
> Yes, I fully agree. I am interested how KiCad and other commercial Tools
> do their work. And I think many people on this list are.
> 

Kicad isn't commercial. Like all CAD programs it has drawbacks and 
advantages. The way it handles library parts and slots is something that 
I think would be very useful for a gEDA software developer to take a 
good look at. It may not be the most intuitive way, has a learning 
curve, but it is very flexible.


> But I can understand that developers, who has spend very much work in
> the gEDA tools feel bad when someone writes something like "My tool does
> this much better. I do not really want to use your tool, but I strongly
> advice you to do it the same way."
> 
> Sometimes it's not easy to find the right wording.
> 

You should sit in on one of those meetings with medical folks. They can 
be pretty blunt. "So what do you think about our XYZ gizmo?" ... "It 
sucks." ... "Oh, ahem, well, can you elaborate a bit on that?"

What I want to say is "This tool does x better. I and a lot of others 
can't use your tool because of it and here is how I think this could be 
fixed". But I can only say it from the position of a user, not as a 
programmer because that's the domain of the experts here.

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/



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