I had a good night sleep so my thoughts are bit more tame. free_electron you mentioned that you have reported on other software performances. Do you links available?
no links . all that stuff happened in a professional setting and were multi day evaluations with multiple people. we all reported what we liked and disliked , many times the manufacturer of the programs were involved. some software testing was under NDA so i cannot tell you what it is , although it is out there . i have been, and am, beta tester for a couple of commercial programs where i provide feedback on the problems encountered. Some of that software i use daily , or used to use daily.
This is not so much an evaluation, it is a log recorded while trying to create a schematic and board with this program. As i am exploring the program i am running into problems. some are because i don't know how it works, some are because the documentation is flawed, some are plain bugs, some are oversights, shortcomings whatever.
i am reporting them as i encounter them. i just shot a 46 minute video that goes over me starting the program looking around in the libraries , messing a bit with the sample schematic , looking around in the library and finalizing by creating a blank sheet and simply drawing a couple of rectangles , changing their color , line thickness, rotating , scaling and moving them.
all pretty basic stuff. you'd think ... the number of idiosynchraties and bugs is unbelievable. and then there is the shortcomings. those are rally basic things that ANY vector drawing program can do but for some reason DEX doesn't.
Why can not show me , when i move a placed part where the x and y coordinates are ? because a tool panel is overlaid on the toolbar. that is clearly a bug. THe code that handles the docking of the panels doesn't take into account that there is a toolbar at the bottom. it just plasters it right over the toolbar. that is not even a code problem. that is a problem with setting an anchor point for a docked window . in visual studio you just have to specify the dockstyle and anchors. they are simply set wrong. it;s not a 'huge' bug in the programatical sense but it is very annying , as a user to have part of the toolbar covered by a docked window.
it starts out great. pick hollow rectangle. you immediateley see where you are with a nicely made x and y display dangling form the mouse. then you start drawing and you get this really cool x and y size display. fantastic !
then you want to move the object. no x y display. want to size it ? no size display. want to rotate it ? no angle display. nothing. you can't even change the line width after it is placed.
you select a fill color , and draw a box : the box is empty , not filled. you set an edge widh and draw a box . i explicitly selected a hollow rectangle( not a rounded rectangle ) yet it shows up as a rounded rectangle. and the line width i selected ? at least off by 10% the grid is set to 1 inch . the width of the rectangle to 1 inch. it's like 0.92 inch wide... you can clearly see it does not fit the grid.
The program really feels like : you can draw something , but you cannot edit it. editing is like an afterthought. The way this works is : if you have not gotten it the way you want it : you should delete and redraw. It is very strange.
it is difficult to convey in words. that is why i filmed it so you can see what i am doing and how the program reacts. i can't make heads nor tails of it. and this is just drawing and manipulating a simple rectangle.
Think about this one : This program has a button to randomly , RANDOMLY ! connect placed components with wires. Yes, you read that right: it just wires up the parts you placed arbitrarily.... ( it actually states in the help manual that it look cool ) ...
What purpose does that serve ? Making a smoke bomb ? i guess after a million click with a million users maybe there will be one version of this random wire that works. i am having trouble understanding why such a button exists ? it does not make sense to me. Let's all go wire up random parts and see what happens. who knows what we will discover. maybe one day there will be an entry in in a history book that says faster than light travel , time machines and free energy were discovered by accident by someone clicking the autowire button in Dex .
if you are going to have a random wire button why not have a button that randomly selects some parts from the library and throws those on the page as well. The end result is the same. if you extrapolate that you could replace this tool with a single button. 'i'm feeling lucky' click it and kablam : there is a schematic made form some randomly selected parts, randomly wired, randomly placed on the board and randomly routed. saves the trouble of having to do all the tedious work and you can put in the marketing material : the fastest program to create a schematic and board , a single button click. you wouldn't even be lying : you never mentioned a working schematic or working board.
the video is rendering right now. it'll be tomorrow evening before it is up.