On Wednesday 08 March 2006 06:47 am, Daniel Haude wrote:
On Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:53:10 +0100, Abrolag <abrolag@...16...> wrote:
I'm just drawing them. It's mostly panel wiring or stripboarded one-offs, so the need for netlists doesn't really apply. However, I must admit it would be nice to be able to export component lists directly into OpenOffice.
I've yet to find a comfortable GUI for PCB design software :(
If I were you I'd use eagle from http://www.cadsoft.de. There's a free version available for both Linux and Windows. It's not GNU though.
Eagle is *non-free*. xcircuit, however, is free (GPL), and works.
Of course like most specialized software whose evolution started before GUIs were common the user interface is a bit non-intuitive at first.
Same for xcircuit. My problem with it is not that the GUI is intrinsically bad, but that it is very inconsistent with other apps (and keyboard-based).
In fact, I personally have little problem using it, but I don't think I'm likely to get much help on the project if xcircuit is the only available tool. For one thing, I'm not laying out schematics: I found a way to use it to rapid prototype interactive fiction game room maps. The problem of connecting doors between rooms is essentially isomorphic to connecting electronic components, and the netlister in xcircuit can be customized to write an XML file defining the room layout, which I can then suck into a Python program and auto-generate the data structure representing the rooms. That makes xcircuit into a CASE tool for creating IF game levels.
Of course, you have to go back and put items into the right places, etc, but it's nice to have a graphical map-building tool, and xcircuit can be made to do it.
But the GUI is not very intuitive. So, if somebody figures out a clever way to port xcircuit-like netlisting ability into Inkscape, I'm interested in that. I didn't figure that you were doing that, but hey, it never hurts to ask, right? ;-)
Cheers, Terry
-- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com