Re: gEDA-user: newbie, couple of Q's about gschem

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2007-10-13 at 08:39 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:

> Complaint #1 is that the diode bridge symbol is about 1/8th the area of a 
> landscape letter page, occupying many times the real estate that the DPDT 
> relay symbol occupies.  And for a newbie, no obvious way to scale it or them 
> to a more pleasing and usable size.  Did I miss it in my menu searches?

gschem's symbols aren't scalable. Many of the components are drawn
larger than you might expect for the size title block which bears a
particular paper size as its name (Its size is probably right when
taking gschem "world" coordinates as mils though).

Usual solution is to increase the size of the title block you're using
for one which matches the aspect ratio of the paper you're going to
print on. That or draw your own symbols.

> Complaint #2 is that while I can see the connection dots in color on screen, 
> they are not nearly so obvious when printed in black & white, and it would be 
> very handy if the much older ')' style of non-connecting crossover symbol was 
> available, but again I couldn't find it.

It is possible to print in color, I'll answer that under point 3. As for
the ) crossover, gschem doesn't support it. You can draw arcs and lines,
but if you ever wanted to netlist the output, these wouldn't show up.
(See the "Add" menu).

If you use them, a tip for making little arcs small enough. The "grips"
for manipulating them will all overlap as the arc is small. Get the
angles / size right from the dialog box when you place the arc, then
box-select and use "em" (edit move) or "ec" (edit copy) to position
them. Also "er" (edit rotate) might be handy.

> I assume there is a symbol editor too, but I didn't look very hard for it.

gschem is a symbol editor too. You can change the "filter" in file-open
and open .sym files.

To draw one, either start from an existing. (You can click a symbol,
then go to the hierarchy menu and choose "down symbol"). Just save
somewhere you've got write access, perhaps in your project directory.

You'll need to add a component source line to your project's gafrc file.
(If you don't have one, just drop an empty file, and place in it the
line:

(component-library "./")

(Or some path to where you saved).

> For what I wanted to do, it would have been not only nice, but also intuitive, 
> if a symbol when selected and floating, ready to place, would be zoomable 
> with the mouse wheel in order to scale it for a more usable, pleasing size.  
> As it worked, the mouse wheel still zooms the main page, not the symbol other 
> than it followed the main pages size changes too.

Thats a nice idea, assuming no-one is so opposed to scalable symbols.
Certainly it might be nice as something you can turn on/off. The main
issue would be for multiple pin components where each pin has to land on
gschem's 100x100 grid.

> Complaint #3, and minor, is that the printout is B&W.  Even when fed to a 
> color capable printer.

This can be changed. This time in a file called "gschemrc", drop the
line:

(output-color "enabled")

(Or edit the system one installed under
$PREFIX/share/gEDA/system-gschemrc, or drop a per user one in
~/.gEDA/gschemrc	


Hope this helps.

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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