Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
What's the "it" software for circuit diagrams
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techman-001:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 17, 2019, 01:33:55 pm ---
--- Quote from: techman-001 on September 17, 2019, 02:18:00 am ---I use gSCHEM which is a Free, GPL'd, easy to use Schematic Capture program.

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Oh, I don't use gSCHEM currently, but yep for schematic capture, it's nice and can produce vector graphics as well. Last I checked, there wasn't really up-to-date binaries for Windows though (or MacOS for that matter), so if the OP isn't using Linux, that may be impractical. (And also, last I checked, that was a while ago, gSCHEM was hard to build on Windows/MSYS2 from source...)

<snip?

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The OP did say "free is important" and as as Windows isn't free I assumed he may mean a Linux app.

As gEDA is Open Source and made by Linux programmers in their free time, naturally they compile gEDA for Linux or any Open Unix. They have no marketing budget or Windows/Mac machines so naturally there isn't a Windows or Mac binary unless a  Windows/Mac user ports it, the source is there ready for them to do so.

Of course the Windows users can avail themselves of a Virtual Machine such as "Virtual Box", install a Free Linux and load gEDA, that should be a no brainer these days ?

I love gSCHEM, it reminds me of my first Schematic Capture love, ORCAD for DOS when it was only a Schematic Capture. In time Orcad was ONLY available for Windows and was slow and buggy as a result (imho).

But gSCHEM is as fast today as Orcad was on DOS, has configurable fastkeys making a nice Function Key Keyboard legend doable (just like ORCAD for DOS), runs on every Open Unix I've tried ... what's not to love ?


tooki:

--- Quote from: magic on September 18, 2019, 07:12:13 am ---UI consistency is sadly a pipe dream in the era of a dozen platforms which all want to "develop" and to "differentiate" themselves and applications which are ported back and forth as the OS fads change.

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True, though it was more internal consistency I had in mind, not so much consistency between platforms. But your point is well taken. (I do find it interesting that in areas where the platforms have become more similar, it’s often been the Mac’s way that eventually took over. For example, how Windows now handles mouse scrolling and some text selection behaviors. Though examples of the opposite definitely exist, too — like keyboard shortcuts, which the Mac didn’t even have until Microsoft put them in Office for Mac in early 1985!!!)


--- Quote from: magic on September 18, 2019, 07:12:13 am ---And an elephant in the room is that even the individual platforms aren't exactly UI-consistent over sufficiently long timespans, while a lot of professional software dates back decades.

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Ain’t that the truth!! :( As a long-time Mac user (since 1992), one of the things I dislike about the Apple of today is its much less rigid adherence to its own UI guidelines, as well as the watering down of the guidelines themselves. So while I still think the Mac has the best desktop UI overall, it’s not quite as predictable an interface as it once was. (Since that’s the whole point of UI consistency: total predictability of behavior.)


--- Quote from: magic on September 18, 2019, 07:12:13 am ---Welcome to the brave new world of UI diversity :-DD

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Well, I wouldn’t call it new. We had a lot more UI creativity going on in the past. Pretty much every desktop UI in common use now is based on the original Mac’s UI fundamentals, which MS copied into Windows, and then Linux et al. copied from Windows. The only other branch of UI that exists in any way whatsoever is X-Windows from the classic UNIX workstations, but that’s practically irrelevant now.


--- Quote from: magic on September 18, 2019, 07:12:13 am ---By the way, you get used to it over time. The amount of UI tricks invented so far is finite, at some point they just stop surprising you anymore.
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Nope. Some things I’ll never get used to. For example, I’ve been using Mac OS X full time since 2002 or so, and I still instinctively press ⌘-N to create a new folder in the Finder (as it did in classic Mac OS), but instead get a new Finder window. I don’t think I’ll ever un-learn that muscle memory. :P


--- Quote from: magic on September 18, 2019, 07:12:13 am ---It's all the genuinely novel fads coming from professional UI designers that I find most disruptive :P

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Well, I think those come from designers who approach it from an artist’s POV, and not from the user’s. Gratuitous change does nothing but stroke the designer’s ego; IMHO, a gifted UI designer is focused on what works best for the user, and most of the time, that means “don’t be creative, do what users know and just reuse existing UI elements/behaviors”. That and look at what users actually try to do; if you see tons of users trying to do something one way instinctively, it’s worth considering making that a way to do it! :)

(Yes, I’ve worked as a UI designer. It bugged the hell out of me when good designs got shot down because they were “the way everyone does it”, or even just — I swear to god this is verbatim — “it’s not Swiss enough, [the usual, proven way] is too American”.  :wtf: Like... a good UI is a good UI, period.)
brabus:
FidoCad or FidoCadJ.
jfiresto:

--- Quote from: techman-001 on September 18, 2019, 11:15:59 am ---... The OP did say " ... Kicad? EasyEDA?  Scheme-it?  Circuit Diagram?  Something else?  Free is important. ... " and Eagle isn't free apart from a crippled eval version.

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Please correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the OP write that he would try Eagle next? He may not have meant that sort of "free" and may find Eagle is not so "crippled", particularly if he does not generate boards.

I am hardly an Eagle fan, but it was just (and still is?) a suggestion.
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: ledtester on September 17, 2019, 10:22:23 pm ---Question... if you have drawn up a schematic in KiCad or Eagle, is it possible to render it in black & white (not grayscale) with heavier weight lines?

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With KiCad, yup. You need to use the "Trace" function in the File dialog. Here you can select the exported file format, B&W or color, and the thickness of lines.
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