On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:47:29 -0800 Bryce Harrington <bryce@...983...> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 08:24:51PM +0000, Abrolag wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:36:34 -0600 Matt Jordan <matt@...1296...> wrote:
Aaron,
After trying Inkscape out for a while and comparing it to some other programs I have, I ended up going with it
<snip>
Nice to see Inkscape is out there taking prisoners :)
I'm using it fairly often now for producing electronic schematics.
Wow, really? That's pretty cool. What were the factors that drew you to using Inkscape for this, versus other options? What are the main benefits you have found for doing schematics with it?
Bryce
In the first place I have found that *all* schematic CAD programs are difficult to use and get in the way of what I want to do. My pet hate is the auto placing of connections with the software deciding where they should be rather than where I want them. I am very fussy about layout, and want drawings to be as clear and easy to follow as possible.
I tried Dia, which is sort of half-way but again found it clunky and obstructive to the way I want to work. The absolute show-stopper being that it couldn't properly import SVGs - not even ones it had created itself - that incidentally Inkscape could display quite happily.
I have a fairly large collection of drawings that were originally made with the !Draw program on an Acorn Risc PC. These have all been converted to SVGs, so also has the small library of 'components' that I built up. So far nothing has !Draw's ease of handling for circles, arcs and bezier curves but Inkscape comes the closest, and is better in every other respect.
As a side issue it would be fantastic if someone could produce a Drawfile importer/exporter plugin for Inkscape. The format was fully documented by Acorn.