Re: gEDA-user: Greetings! I am new here

[Kitts <kitts@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 23 Nov 2005 8:42 pm IST, Stuart Brorson wrote:
SB> > I have not fully understood the gEDA package yet but from the features 
list, 
SB> > i am impressed. I would however like to read any review of the package 
if 
SB> > available as i was unable to find anything worth while. Something in 
SB> > comparison with EAGLE would be excellent. Is there any?
SB> 
SB> There was an article talking about gEDA in the March 2005 edition of
SB> Circuit Cellar.   It doesn't do a compare/contrast of gEDA against
SB> Eagle, but it does talk about the design flow for gEDA.  More articles
SB> will be coming out in other paper publications soon.  
SB> 
SB> You can also read the docs and wiki available on the gEDA site.

Ill dig out the article and keep my eyes open to catch those upcoming 
articles. :-) Comparison with EAGLE would be a + but is certainly not a 
requirement. Thanks for the pointer. 

SB> > My prime interest, as might be any body else's, is what is the 
learning 
SB> > curve? does it provide all the functionality that EAGLE provides? and 
what 
SB> > is the performance in comparison with EAGLE?
SB> 
SB> If you mean the free Eagle, then gEDA offers unlimited design sizes,
SB> whereas the free Eagle is limited.  From your perspective, gEDA is
SB> comparable to the payware version of Eagle.

Yes. I was refering to the free version but was considering a full version 
purchase and am glad i have not done that yet. ;-)

SB> You will need to do a little more work with gEDA in terms of drawing
SB> your own footprints and symbols -- the commercial pacakges tend to
SB> have larger parts libraries.  OTOH, there are about a thousand (maybe
SB> more) symbols and footprints already available.  Also, making symbols
SB> and footprints isn't hard, and if you don't want to draw them yourself
SB> you can surf around you will find lots of people giving away gEDA
SB> symbols and footprints (and scripts to build them).   

I do not mind creating footprints for the components i use and distributing 
them as well. In fact I had to do that with EAGLE too as footprints were 
either not available or were not satisfactory. That of course is for the 
not-so-common or even non-standard-footprint components like certain 
sensors. I would be happy to create and distribute these footprints if not 
already available.

SB> The schematic capture program is very easy to learn and use.  No real
SB> learning curve there if you already know how to do schematic capture.
SB> 
SB> GEDA's layout tool, PCB, is very capable and powerful.  Some people
SB> complain about it's user interface, but those complaints are
SB> pertainent to older versions of the program.  It's been ported to GTK
SB> and now is reasonably easy to use.  It does present a little bit of a
SB> learning curve, but so does any powerful layout tool.

Yes, I see most complaints against it for its user inerface but all of these 
refer to the non-GTK version. The version i have is however the older 
non-GTK version.

SB> > I use EAGLE's Auto-Router quiet often and hence would like to know the 
SB> > performance of PCB in this regard.
SB> 
SB> PCB has an autorouter which apparently works well.  I don't use it,
SB> but others do.

It is my practice to manually route all the critical tracks and then auto 
route the rest. I know there are a lot of people out there who strongly 
rule out auto routers but i feel that it reduces production time 
drastically. Routing those dense boards can be such a pain. (Just my point 
of view ;-))

SB> > I use Kubuntu 5.10 and my installation is hence from the Ubuntu 
SB> > repositories.
SB> 
SB> You should search through the lists to see what prerequisite packages
SB> you need to install in order to use gEDA on Ubuntu.  To do an install
SB> from the CD you will need to make sure you have the development
SB> libraries for a number of packages.  The majority of complaints I see
SB> about gEDA these days come from people who have consumer-grade distros
SB> installed on their machines (SuSE 9.X personal, Fedora desktop,
SB> Ubuntu, etc.).   The consumer-grade distros often leave off important
SB> header files and utilities used when compiling programs such as gEDA.
SB> Some even leave off gcc!  The gEDA Suite CD installer tries to take
SB> care of some dependencies, but these consumer-grade distros are
SB> basically crippled when it comes to building software.  Therefore, if
SB> you can find a pre-compiled version for Ubuntu, you might want to use
SB> that.  

I have the binaries installed so i need not compile it unless i want 
bleeding edge. I might only consider compiling PCB to have the GTK version.
Currently installed versions are:
gEDA : 20050313-2
PCB   : 1.99j+20050127-2
 
SB> [1]  For example, if you want to do high-speed stuff (GHz), and need
SB> to attach routing attributes to nets, then you can't use gEDA.  (Nor
SB> can you use Eagle.)  GEDA also doesn't do hierarchical busses as well
SB> as it should.   But it works great for flat designs of almost
SB> arbitrary size.
SB> 

-- 
Cheers!
Kitts