gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA

[John Griessen <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 09/08/2011 03:24 AM, Attila Kinali wrote:
The good part of kicad was, that producing
> a PCB is easily possible even if you know nothing about the tool. But getting
> to more advanced features was hard to impossible within the time i tried it.
>
> Now comes the catch: When i was a teenager, i did an electronics project
> in high school. Not having access to the internet and not knowing anything
> about OSS (i dont think gEDA existed back then), i got a copy of Orcad for
> DOS (it was ancient even back then). But, within a day i was able to enter
> my first test schematics and produce something that looked like a PCB
.
.
.
> Now the question is, why isn't there any OSS EDA tool out there that
> combines the availability of complex features with ease of use like
> Orcad did 20 years ago?
>
> If there were one, i'd be happy to throw money at it, to help it being
> developed.
>
> 			Attila Kinali
>
> PS: for my OH project, i decided to stick with comercial tools.


If anyone has some time for planning user interface changes, I have a few
low level ideas of what is stopping development toward "complex
features with ease of use".

1.  The double keystrokes in gschem need to become single
strokes to match with every other UI anywhwere, so de facto standard key commands
can be adopted for cut, paste, etc.

2.  The scales of symbols and borders in existing libraries needs to be workable
for A size or letter size paper "out of the box".  And the beginner mode should
have a create new drawing button that encapsulates this.

3.  A tool manager could be the place for some of this new function.  A tool manager that
"integrates" the separate tools and serves to reinforce a pcb development work flow as a
memory aid and speed tool for infrequent users.

4. PCB needs an alternate mode to start in where sequences of common tasks are
started by a single button, rather than, 1. get in the right tool mode, 2. click mouse.
For beginners, it needs to include:

create traces all with the mouse,
place parts all with the mouse,
move parts with mouse and a modifier key,
drag traces.

Use of cut and paste buffers needs to be invisible by default and otional with a workaround that
does not require knowing they exist.

After these low level stoppers, we should find textbooks to study on GUI design, compare those
to Orcad twenty years ago, and copy what is not patented.

John Griessen
--
Ecosensory


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