Andy Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > While it's not likely a serious PCB editing tool will be text based > (top-shelf PCB layout people have excellent visual and visualization > skills and can do a great job of using the least amount of PCB real- > estate while getting the least-congested routing),
Yes, that's why I think it would be best for me to simply outsource the layout step to someone more apt at it than me. When looking for someone to hire for the layout, I would still prefer someone who would do it in GNU pcb (or some other free open source tool with an open text-based file format if there are any) rather than some proprietary tool -- even if I hire someone else to do the job, I would still like to "own" the product in the sense of being able to modify it. > "schematic" design > entry can be done, and done well, in a plain-text format. > > At my last day job (before the company was bought out and half the > staff shit-canned, but I digress), we used a text-based pinlist > design entry method. Yes, I know of course that this can be done. Foregoing the graphical schematics and writing the netlist directly in vi would indeed be much easier for me and would allow to me work on my design from anywhere and not just from the one single physical location where I have an X11 display, but there is one big disadvantage. The traditional schematic drawing is a really important piece of documentation for a circuit. I'm nowhere near a professional HW engineer, so I would certainly like to be able to show my design to other engineers for review. A circuit without schematics would probably be seen by most people the way we software hackers look at software without source code -- as useless. For these reasons I've decided to bite the bullet, go outside my comfort zone and use a graphical drawing program like gschem, and have my circuit design captured in the traditional schematic form. And it still comes as a great aid that the .sch files are text-based! I can maintain them in CVS with no sweat, and I can even edit the vector graphics by editing the file in vi -- if I want to move an object, I don't have to drag and drop it with a mouse, I can edit the coordinates in the .sch file instead. This is very useful to me, and I'm very thankful to the gEDA developers for this ability. BB, MS _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
