Re: gEDA-user: is gEDA a good choice for designers?

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 3, 2007, at 7:08 AM, John Luciani wrote:

> On 7/3/07, Ales Hvezda <ahvezda@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> If those are the only three serious limitations, then gEDA would  
>>> seem
>>> suitable for me. My main concern has been going ahead and bumping my
>>
>> You will probably also have draw your own symbols as people have been
>> complaining about the dreadful state of the shipped library.
>
> I would disagree that the library that ships with gschem (or PCB)  
> is "dreadful".
> You do need to verify symbols and footprints against your process  
> requirements
> and production components. But that is true for commercial packages  
> as well.

Yes, indeed.

The only real problem is that the GUI kind of encourages the delusion  
that the library symbols are what you should use. In reality (with  
gEDA or any commercial tool I've used), you should use the library  
symbols only as starting points. Because the GUI doesn't provide a  
shortcut here, it takes a few extra seconds to make a copy for  
customization. Annoying, but the productivity impact is negligible.

The good thing about the library is that even for symbols that aren't  
boxes, you rarely need to draw one from scratch. There's usually  
something similar to what you want ready to customize. And for boxes  
there are several construction tools to choose from. But a library  
that contained symbols fitting every component, process, and  
prejudice would need billions of them. Then the complaint would be "I  
can't find my symbol".

>
> With a documented open file format design automation of symbols and  
> footprints
> is possible. With an ASCII file format it is easy.

Yes.

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




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