Re: gEDA-user: gEDA/gaf capabilities

[Kai-Martin Knaak <kmk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:23:57 -0800, Steve Meier wrote:

> 1) Lack of support for hierarchical buses. 
> 2) pcb lacks buried, blind and micro vias. 
> 3) no back annotation between pcb and gschem.

My personal hit list of weaknesses is more concerned with usability. Much 
can be done, but is more hassle than desirable. Even a very common task 
like an update of the layout after a trivial change of the schematic 
suffers from this. Say, I added a low pass to my signal path. To 
propagate this into the layout, I have to:

1) save the schematic
2) call gsch2pcb foo.sch 
3) in the file menu of pcb choose 'load layout to buffer'
4) point the file chooser to ' '
5) left-click  exactly once at some free space on the canvas of pcb
6) choose 'load netlist file'
7) point the file chooser to 'foo.net'
8) type ':ExecuteFile(foo.cmd)'

All of this could be reduced to one and a half step: A special save 
command, that calls gsch2pcb on the fly. A running instance of pcb would 
be informed, that new versions of foo.new.pcb, foo.net and foo.cmd have 
been written. In response, it produces a pop-up to ask whether or not the 
files should be processed. 

More weaknesses of this usability kind: 
* No simple way to lock or unlock all objects of a selection.
* No fool-proof way to align footprints to the grid.
* Lack of properties dialogs in pcb.
* No simple way to transfer a selection of symbols in gschem to a 
selection of corresponding footprints in pcb.
* No simple way to update footprints in a layout.
* No way to define a set of preferred grid sizes.
* No way to manipulate individual footprints in the layout except for pad 
size, hole size and clearance.  
* No way to declare a list of preferred footprints for a symbol. E.g. 
"1206", "0805" and  "0402" for a generic resistor.
* No GUI way to configure keyboard accels.
* No easy way to define sub schematic symbols.
* No (GUI) way to rotate by angles other than 90° (both gschem and pcb)
* No way to multi-copy objects (symbols, vias, footprints, tracks...)

Sounds like I am unhappy with geda, which I am not --- See my other post 
in this thread :-)

---<(kaimartin)>------(back to my current layout...)
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
http://lilalaser.de/blog



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