software for drawing schematics on a PC

Strewth, your freehand circuit drawing skills are worse than mine.

has two free CAD programs. ExpressPCB for drawing a PCB and ExpressSCH for drawing a circuit diagram. It fulfils all five of your criteria. There are quite a number of similar websites like f'rinstance. ExpressPCB just happens to be the one I use. The pcb/schematic editors from these various pcb making websites are lookalike/workalikes. Only catch is that they all produce their own proprietary output files, none of which are industry standard. However this is not an issue for you because you only want to draw a diagram, not make a board. I find these simple little editors very intuitive to learn and use, more so than the editors which DO output industry standard files like Eagle and Protel.

PH

Hi, If you find ExpressSCH a little confusing then you could always draw the thing in MS Paint, its free and as you are only using a few symbols it would not take up that much time.

But I think ExpressSCH is the best option, I use ExpressPCB for doing board layouts and it works very well.

Thanks

I

free,

only

draw

MS Paint? You truly have a taste for horror. :) I concede for novelty value one could draw a schematic in it but have you clicked on the link the original poster has provided? That would be cruel and unusual punishment.

To answer the original question: A lot of non-free EDA (electronic design automation) software out there is available for free with some restrictions like the number of components one can put down or the number of pads one can have. The first answer lists two. I haven't used them before, I don't know if they allow printing out or have any restrictions. Here are a couple more, in case the other two dont work out:

Eagle at

I use it. A little tricky but OK for drawing a schematic. The freeware has restriction in that one can only design 8x8 (or is it 10x8) inch board. There is no restriction on schematic size though and there are extensive component libraries in case you need them.

TinyCad

Open Source, totally free. Very simple, only does schematics. Might be just the thing you are looking for.

I downloaded tinycad. Works just fine for my purposes.

Thanks!!

Although it seems that you have already selected a program, I would recommend you (and anybody interested in free and open EDA software) Kicad. As a plus, it works both in Windows and in Linux.

Check it at:

3-D PCBs are a real plus!

Regards,

JOSE

Yeah good call, its a nice piece of Open Source software. I have only worked with it a little bit but it looks good. Maybe not for this application as it weights in at 70Mb but if anyone wants a full design path from schematic to PCB, should be looked at. The problem with it is that not many people seem to know about it.

Eugene.

Yes, a little too heavy for me, but looks like a great program. I love the

3D images.

Too late anyway, I have used the TinyCad program and won't be needing anything better for a while now.

I wasn't looking for a CAD program, but after reading the previous posts, I downloaded Tinycad and Expresspcb.

The Expresspcb program runs fine on my Win98 pc and it is quite easy to learn and use. One problem I do have is the frame around the schematic. I know there are a few options for the page size, but I can't change the frame to the size that I would like it to be.

It would be nice to delete it completely.

Sometimes when I right click on the frame a menu appears that might let me change the frame, but the menu items disappear or will not work when I try to select them.

When I try to run Tinypcb, I get a runtime error, even after installing a JET program that they recommended installing from Microsoft.

Russell Griffiths

you need a copy of multism 7

should I mention torrent ?

I assume you mean multisim 7. I have just researched it a little and found out the free version has a limit of 50 components.

But I don't know what you mean by "torrent".

Russell Griffiths.

google for it .

gEDA suite if you have a Linux machine. I run it on Linux serevr while running X-Client on my Windows PC

Rudolf

Ill take a look , solaris ?

i run it under Linux FC3.

Rudolf