EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff => Topic started by: benjamin545 on April 27, 2014, 01:10:06 am
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Anyone use gEDA? I use linux as my OS of choice and was looking for a good simulation software to use. I have basically no experience with software design and id consider myself a beginner when it comes to electronics so i was looking for a way to try to simulate circuits on a computer. so far what ive gathered from gEDA is that its more like an organization of small programs that can all work together to do various different things for electronics design/ simulation/ pcb design.
the first program i started working with was gscheme, which i find pretty decent to use and easy enough to place components on the screen and link them all together, but then there is this secondary stage where i guess you give the components attributes in a specific way that allows you to run them through a spice simulator, ngspice, and that is where i seem to get hung up. i don't really know whats the easiest way to graphically simulate a schematic or if thats even possible. it all seems a little over my head honestly, or maybe im just not finding a good starting spot to build up from and learn how to use it right.
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In the whole gEDA collection gscheme is indeed the most decent part. From there on it goes downhill.
E.g. the combination of gscheme with ngspice (or any other spice) was an afterthought. What you get by combining them is all the limitations of the gEDA concept and all the limitations of a classic SPICE. The components (devices) you use in gscheme need to be prepared and have support for SPICE. Only few components coming with gscheme out of the box as part of gscheme's device library come prepared. And you need to set SPICE-specific attributes for the components to help generate input for ngspice out of gscheme schematics. To do this you need to know SPICE. http://wiki.geda-project.org/geda:ngspice_and_gschem (http://wiki.geda-project.org/geda:ngspice_and_gschem) gives an example.
If you want a reasonable version of SPICE, although also with a GUI that could stand some polishing, try LTSpice under Wine in Linux.
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wow, ok. seems like trying to make gEDA do what i want it to do is a little out of the question at this moment then. i think for now ill try to just stick with a breadboard and maybe sometime give ltspice a try. i like gscheme for the schematic design though, seems like they just need some work preparing a bunch of the library components to be pre configured for spice? and also i guess somehow integrate better with the output from spice to show what is happening.
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gEDA is one of those open source projects where they prefer to start adding new stuff instead of finishing what they have started.