Re: gEDA-user: Introduction and some questions/thoughts on gEDA/gaf...

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Something which is missing is a means to have a component have 1
> extra level of hierarchy though.

IIRC I've mentioned this before.  Some project-wide database that
matches the gEDA symbol, PCB footprint, component attributes, and
perhaps vendor part number.  then, you'd just put in a NAND gate, then
use search, paramaters, or browsing to select a row from the database,
and poof - footprint and ordering info.  After PCB layout, you can
still swap to compatible components.  What's missing is (1) time to
fill in the database, and (2) some gui app to help you manage the
selection process.

It also lets you pull in a symbol by vendor part number, too.

> I'd like to be able to create a single, for example, NPN symbol.

The one corporate library I worked with had N symbols for each item,
like nand-1.sym nand-2.sym nand-3.sym and had a hotkey for rotating
among them.  They were logically equivalent, but for example, one
might have inverting output AND and the other inverting input OR.