Author Topic: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?  (Read 10576 times)

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Offline m3vuvTopic starter

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are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« on: November 15, 2021, 12:49:51 pm »
looking at some circuit designs online it looks to me like a lot of ppl are using this Fritzing thing,i find them horrid,look like sommat out of a 2yr olds scribbleing book,whats ppls views on it?,give me a proper schematic any day!!.
 

Offline m98

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2021, 01:35:59 pm »
Normal schematics haven't gone anywhere. Fritzing has its small niche in being the perfect software to document breadboard and stripboard circuits. But I find those drawings more comparable to a PCB layout, rather than a schematics replacement.
 

Offline m3vuvTopic starter

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2021, 01:51:40 pm »
horses for courses i suppose,i find them hard as i like to visulise them in my head as a normal schematic,its what your used to i suppose,i think i have only used a bread board once,find them teribly unreliable,i prefer veroboard.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2021, 01:55:52 pm »
I've never heard of Fritzing, so I Googled it and I do recognise the graphics, which some people have posted here, when asking beginner questions.

I use a KiCAD, LTSpice, Proteus and sometimes MS/K Paint for drawing schematics, depending on the situation.

I agree that I find a layout much more difficult to read, than a proper schematic and I've politely told people this, when they've posted them.
 

Offline mc172

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2021, 02:07:02 pm »
I don't think they're meant to be easy to read for the purpose of understanding at-a-glance how a circuit works, they make it easy for people to build simple circuits without a lot of prior knowledge.

They even say something to this effect on their website:
Quote
Fritzing is an open-source hardware initiative that makes electronics accessible as a creative material for anyone. We offer a software tool, a community website and services in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, fostering a creative ecosystem that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and layout and manufacture professional PCBs.

The last bit is perhaps stretching the truth a bit...
 

Offline Berni

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2021, 02:07:52 pm »
Yeah i also think a schematic is better.

But thing is that the arduino users that most of these breadboard layout diagrams are made for do usually find it better. People without experience in the find find it easier to follow when they get a 1:1 picture of what they have in front of them.

It is a similar thing when making a manual for some consumer device that the user has to hook up, like say a solar charger module. The user probably knows how to wire up a mains socket, but never actually used schematics. So they will find it easier and more understandable if you draw all the components of the system and draw lines directly from terminal to terminal to show them what wires need to hook up where. Having a schematic just adds another step of identifying what part is what and what terminal pin is what.
 

Online T3sl4co1l

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2021, 03:50:03 pm »
Beginners gotta start somewhere. The first schematics I drew, with pencil and paper, were surely the most grotesque you'd have seen. ;D

So what's the problem really?  Don't like new people joining the community?  C'mon...

Put another way: at least they're using anything at all.  No, they're not communicating as clearly as you could.  They're learning.  They may not even be interested in learning the things you know; they may have other priorities: more towards programming, or getting through school, or just a one-off project, etc.

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« Last Edit: November 15, 2021, 03:51:34 pm by T3sl4co1l »
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Offline John B

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2021, 09:54:55 pm »
Communication in the engineering and scientific world is, or at least should be about conveying the relevant information in the most concise way without extraneous information.

The fritzing schematic method seems to be fundamentally similar to a regular schematic but using flashier photo realistic circuit components. OK, but I don't like that it expresses circuits in a breadboard format because that adds an extra step of decoding the circuit path. It also makes an assumption that the schematic creator and reader have the same breadboard layout, whereas I've come across varying rail splits on breadboards. That probably isn't an issue for anyone here who can read a schematic, but for someone who lacks that knowledge and is trying to recreate a visual representation, they are left without troubleshooting knowledge that should allow them to rectify the circuit. Same goes for the arduino board connections. Sure if the pic is high res enough, you can read what each pin is, otherwise you need to go find the pinout for the arduino board and determine which pin on which pin header is what. Or you could just have a schematic that says GND, 5V etc etc  :-//

The lack of textual information for each component is a giant no-no for me. This is compounded by the elaborate graphics that take up screen space around each component blocking out room for any text info.

So Ill take the elitist route here, not out of any gatekeeping but out of a desire to see people have long term skills to succeed with. Anyone interested in electronics regardless of age should be encouraged to learn traditional schematics first off. Don't underrate people, explain the basic concepts behind schematics and help them understand and give them the proper foundation for the rest of their life in electronics. I've come across this exact issue in the pedagogy of other fields. People, especially young people and beginners often see a traditional method as a barrier which "seems" too hard and so they seek out a simpler and easier method, but one that ultimately leaves them with a substandard skillset and time wasted that could have been spent on a more effective way.
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2021, 10:04:06 pm »
looking at some circuit designs online it looks to me like a lot of ppl are using this Fritzing thing,i find them horrid,look like sommat out of a 2yr olds scribbleing book,whats ppls views on it?,give me a proper schematic any day!!.

Well, by that measure, you could also be looking at Twitter posts all day and think human intelligence has gone forever. :-DD

So no it's not dying at all, and most people using Fritzing-like stuff are likely people who would never have drawn a proper schematic anyway.
 

Offline Bud

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2021, 10:23:45 pm »
At least people draw proper point to point connections with it. Not like the army of new generation dummies who drops parts on the schematic sheet and terminates every single pin with ports.
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Offline ebclr

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #10 on: November 15, 2021, 11:18:05 pm »
The old legible and structural view schematics is an art, Today's schematics are like a component datasheet, just show pin names and numbers only, no connection, no structural view, no nothing. Even power isn't there, It's pure garbage.  Or we are old, and the new generation just like that #$%%
 
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Offline penfold

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #11 on: November 15, 2021, 11:25:42 pm »
At least people draw proper point to point connections with it. Not like the army of new generation dummies who drops parts on the schematic sheet and terminates every single pin with ports.

In defence of the army of dummies, let's not make provocative statements. The nature of the schematic itself is changing, it's significantly easier to navigate hierarchy with modern tools, most designs being handled electronically makes it less favourable to use A1 sheets that are totally illegible when zoomed to fit a screen etc etc. So why not use hierarchy to provide some abstraction to sub-circuits and separate functions or find ways to make the design more flexible with less drafting effort and chances for mistakes?

Learning to read or draw a schematic is honestly something I've forgotten how or when it happened, but I remember it being described like reading sheet music and one day, years later, I was thinking how right that guy was. When you (maybe not, but I do at least) think about it, in reading a schematic you need to have a lot of stuff running through your mind at once to get from straight wires drawn at reasonably arbitrary locations, some connections omitted for clarity and components that are drawn to look nothing like their physical entity to "something" that's comprehendible and imaginable as a real system... at least from that perspective I see Fritzing as a more logical choice than studying loads of theory first and going for the intentional hard-way, maybe that approach will lead to a better understanding perhaps.

I totally agree from being used to a formal schematic approach it can be more difficult to follow... but surely by offering assistance one assumes the responsibility of meeting them halfway with the means by which they communicate the problem?
 
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Online T3sl4co1l

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2021, 11:43:45 pm »
The old legible and structural view schematics is an art, Today's schematics are like a component datasheet, just show pin names and numbers only, no connection, no structural view, no nothing. Even power isn't there, It's pure garbage.  Or we are old, and the new generation just like that #$%%

To be fair, the old generation never had to deal with 2,000 pin vacuum tubes. Modern problems require modern solutions. :)

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Offline fourfathom

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #13 on: November 16, 2021, 01:00:43 am »
At least people draw proper point to point connections with it. Not like the army of new generation dummies who drops parts on the schematic sheet and terminates every single pin with ports.

I tend to agree with you, but in my last big project (where I led a team of excellent engineers) we had some schematic pages that were just that.  These were for boards with multiple 1000-pin BGA custom ASICs, and there was no reasonable way to show the connections or generate the netlists.  In fact, much of this was automated, and those schematics and netlists were generated by software. We had human-drawn upper level block diagrams that showed the gist of the thing.

But for more normal schematics I definitely like (where practical) signal flow from left to right, power on top and ground at the bottom, and connections plainly shown.

I don't like the Fritzing diagrams, but I don't get upset about them -- I'm just happy that someone is dipping their toes in electronics.  If they enjoy it they may eventually advance to real schematics (etc).
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Offline VK3DRB

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #14 on: November 16, 2021, 07:57:17 am »
Yes, it is dying as an ART. I create schematics, PCB layouts and coding for a living. I consider these to be treated as ARTWORK, not just output files.

I often have to read others' schematics, layouts and code; including those from reputable companies. Pet gripes:
1. Inheriting schematics done by lazy engineers.
2. Inheriting PCB layouts done by lazy engineers.
3. Inheriting firmware written by lazy engineers or programmers.

I say lazy, because often that is the reason things are incomplete, ambiguous and even unreadable. But sometime management does not provide the time to do things properly. I see it a lot. Lack of test points, lack of net labels, dodgy track layout, or no ground test points - the latter should be be punishable by death. Poorly named or inconsistently named schematic sheets is very common. The ad-hoc use of underscores and upper/lower case is a pet gripe. Using underscores in net labels is plain bloody stupid when using Altium.

This can be all prevented ensuring there are company standards (schematic, layout and C/C#/C++ coding standards). It's hard work to create them, but it is a good investment.

 
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Offline Berni

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #15 on: November 16, 2021, 08:17:20 am »
Making a good readable schematic is an art in itself.

But its difficult to write a strict standard in how to draw schematics in such a way. Sure there are some general guidelines of power on top, ground on bottom, signal flow from left to right..etc But things are not always so black and white. Different ways of laying things out is needed depending on the scenario.

Sure a schematic with all net labels connecting stuff is bad, but then again having a schematic where everything is a line with no net labels can be even worse. Things with large numbers of nets can turn into a spaghetti maze that you have to chase around with your finger to even find what goes where. It's about using sane judgement in where to use net labels and where to run lines. Or when lines are used there are various ways of grouping them together that can make it much easier to follow, but there is again no solid rule on how to do it.

Part of it is definitely the rapid pace of development these days. In the 70s the design of a piece of electronics involved a large team of people that worked on it for pretty large time frames. They all needed to understand each others documentation. Even more importantly the schematic being turned into a PCB was read by a human being, not a computer where the CAD tool simply turns the schematic into a netlist. So the person drawing a nice schematic actually saved a good deal of work for the 2nd person that had to turn it into a PCB. Hand drawing a nice professional looking schematic is also a lot of work, so the person drawing it puts a lot more thought into the layout (like sketching it out first) so that once they do go for the final clean drawing they will get it right first try.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2021, 08:25:07 am »
looking at some circuit designs online it looks to me like a lot of ppl are using this Fritzing thing,i find them horrid,look like sommat out of a 2yr olds scribbleing book,whats ppls views on it?,give me a proper schematic any day!!.

Fritzing diagrams remind me a lot of your grammar, I can barely read it. I can't stand Fritzing diagrams myself but they are really only used by beginners, mostly maker types, any real engineer and most mid range hobbyists use proper schematics, they haven't gone anywhere.
 
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Offline Miyuki

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #17 on: November 16, 2021, 08:37:39 am »
Oh, thanks, I did not know it is called Fritzing
It looks like a great way to explain to non-technical people where to put what wire  :-+
It is a totally different thing that schematics
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #18 on: November 16, 2021, 12:13:53 pm »
Making a good readable schematic is an art in itself.

Sure a schematic with all net labels connecting stuff is bad, but then again having a schematic where everything is a line with no net labels can be even worse. Things with large numbers of nets can turn into a spaghetti maze that you have to chase around with your finger to even find what goes where.

Altium allows you to you harnesses in schematics. Harnesses are OK if used wisely and the engineer does not go over-board ('scuse the pun). I have seen harnesses grouping harnesses grouping harnesses! And with harnesses' signal names changing between sheets. The engineer who created it made such a mess, there were Altium harness errors he left in the design, then he left the company. I ended up fixing the errors, and in doing so I found two instances where where one  digital output was driving two GPIO digital inputs in a processor.

I do use harnesses myself but rarely. Altium made a mess of harnesses in my opinion. Changes to harness names is not trivial.

I think that engineer is like some sharp coders who make a point of writing pointers to arrays of pointers which point to pointers so that the appointed engineer points out he doesn't see the point. 
 

Offline amyk

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #19 on: November 16, 2021, 02:40:48 pm »
The old legible and structural view schematics is an art, Today's schematics are like a component datasheet, just show pin names and numbers only, no connection, no structural view, no nothing. Even power isn't there, It's pure garbage.  Or we are old, and the new generation just like that #$%%

To be fair, the old generation never had to deal with 2,000 pin vacuum tubes. Modern problems require modern solutions. :)

Tim
For laptop schematics and such where components have hundreds or thousands of pins, I can see the utility. But using that style for something much simpler is adding complexity where there shouldn't be any. When both ends of a net are on the same page, try to connect them with an actual wire.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #20 on: November 16, 2021, 03:12:14 pm »
Altium allows you to you harnesses in schematics. Harnesses are OK if used wisely and the engineer does not go over-board ('scuse the pun). I have seen harnesses grouping harnesses grouping harnesses! And with harnesses' signal names changing between sheets. The engineer who created it made such a mess, there were Altium harness errors he left in the design, then he left the company. I ended up fixing the errors, and in doing so I found two instances where where one  digital output was driving two GPIO digital inputs in a processor.

I do use harnesses myself but rarely. Altium made a mess of harnesses in my opinion. Changes to harness names is not trivial.

I think that engineer is like some sharp coders who make a point of writing pointers to arrays of pointers which point to pointers so that the appointed engineer points out he doesn't see the point.

Yeah i am not a fan of how harnesses work in Altium. They are a great idea, but poorly executed.

For the medium scale designs i tend to work on, my preferred way is to have a high level block diagram out of those green sub-circuit blocks on the first page of the schematic and then have one schematic page per block. All the external connectors are also typically on the first page. That way you can get a good high level overview of what talks to where while each schematic page only has the relevant things within that block. Sometimes i even add some simple block diagrams on top of the green block to give a basic jist of what is going on inside before you even open it (ie an amplifier or level shifter shown as a triangle arow). Flowing a signal around is reasonably easy even manualy when exported as pdf.

That being said i still found this style of schematic used in confusing ways where parts of a circuit are cut up in a nonsense way and spread across two or more modules, so you have to constantly flip pages to figure out what is going on.
 

Offline jonovid

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #21 on: November 16, 2021, 03:14:25 pm »
is a problem making too many assumptions in schematics. IMO
better to know what something is, then to guess if it has supply or ground pins  :-//
I like the old school black and white schematics with full detail.
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Online Zero999

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #22 on: November 16, 2021, 03:41:17 pm »
Communication in the engineering and scientific world is, or at least should be about conveying the relevant information in the most concise way without extraneous information.

The fritzing schematic method seems to be fundamentally similar to a regular schematic but using flashier photo realistic circuit components. OK, but I don't like that it expresses circuits in a breadboard format because that adds an extra step of decoding the circuit path. It also makes an assumption that the schematic creator and reader have the same breadboard layout, whereas I've come across varying rail splits on breadboards. That probably isn't an issue for anyone here who can read a schematic, but for someone who lacks that knowledge and is trying to recreate a visual representation, they are left without troubleshooting knowledge that should allow them to rectify the circuit. Same goes for the arduino board connections. Sure if the pic is high res enough, you can read what each pin is, otherwise you need to go find the pinout for the arduino board and determine which pin on which pin header is what. Or you could just have a schematic that says GND, 5V etc etc  :-//

The lack of textual information for each component is a giant no-no for me. This is compounded by the elaborate graphics that take up screen space around each component blocking out room for any text info.

So Ill take the elitist route here, not out of any gatekeeping but out of a desire to see people have long term skills to succeed with. Anyone interested in electronics regardless of age should be encouraged to learn traditional schematics first off. Don't underrate people, explain the basic concepts behind schematics and help them understand and give them the proper foundation for the rest of their life in electronics. I've come across this exact issue in the pedagogy of other fields. People, especially young people and beginners often see a traditional method as a barrier which "seems" too hard and so they seek out a simpler and easier method, but one that ultimately leaves them with a substandard skillset and time wasted that could have been spent on a more effective way.
I suppose fritzing drawings are similar to those of electrical panels, which show where all the wires and terminals go. I personally find all the extra information on electrical drawings distracting, when all I want to do is understand how the flaming thing works, but it's necessary to wire it up and can help with fault finding. I like to have a schematic which just shows what's connected to what, without showing the terminals and wiring in too much detail and a separate drawing, or wiring schedule detailing how it's actually wired up.
 

Online ejeffrey

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #23 on: November 16, 2021, 04:29:50 pm »
At least people draw proper point to point connections with it. Not like the army of new generation dummies who drops parts on the schematic sheet and terminates every single pin with ports.

This.

Also, modern board designs are 5 ICs, 100 decoupling capacitors, 500 nets, and 3 resistors.  So much of circuit design has moved into IC design that I know people who just say "I'm a circuit designer" to mean "analog IC designer."  It's pretty understandable that few board level schematics look like the beautiful drawings in the end of an old HP service manual. 

Finally, I have to say looking at some fritzing schematics to see what it was all about that I am a bit disappointed that regular schematic design has not adopted color.  Many schematics will only ever be viewed on a monitor and color printers are hardly more expensive than black and white.  Color coded nets definitely could certainly be abused but it could also be a powerful tool for communication of intent if done properly.

 

Offline fourfathom

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Re: are drawing normal schematics a dying art?
« Reply #24 on: November 16, 2021, 05:21:16 pm »
I am a bit disappointed that regular schematic design has not adopted color.

Please, though, consider the *very* common red/green color deficiency that affects a good percentage of the male population.  Some colors are extremely hard for me and others to tell apart, and it's not just red and green.  At least make sure there is redundant information on the schematic so I can figure it out without being able to differentiate all the colors.
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