Comments on The Art of Engineering: Open Source EDA

I've never heard of gEDA, but it looks interesting...

2009-01-23T08:49:00.000+02:00

I've never heard of gEDA, but it looks interesting.

I think the biggest problem with open source EDA tools is vendor support and customer acceptance. Let's say you want to get some libraries from a particular vendor to help in your design. That vendor isn't going to use gEDA. Also, customers often like to share data using popular EDA software. I'm pretty sure gEDA will not be the choice of software for such exchanges.

Granted, gEDA has its place, but I fear it will always be limited in its appeal.

You can do everything you need to without any scri...

2008-12-08T21:32:00.000+02:00

You can do everything you need to without any scripting. Where it comes in handy is automating repetitive tasks. There are quite a few useful scripts available, like one to create box symbols, and another to create footprints.

I haven't needed to create my own scripts, but I have (partially) written my own PCB footprint generator. I also have a few ideas about automating some other tasks which will make the design process significantly easier and faster.

Google searches, the gEDA wiki and the gEDA user mailing list all provide good information about what is already available.

Thanks for the insightful article, Duncan, and for...

2008-12-05T00:34:00.000+02:00

Thanks for the insightful article, Duncan, and for the tips on getting started.

I'm curious: do you mostly create your own custom gEDA scripts, or do you often easily find existing scripts on the web? Or, perhaps you don't need to script much at all?