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Flowcharts and diagrams

Hi,

I'm looking for a freeware or low cost program do document and illustrate the signal processing flow in my FPGA design. I'd like to use building blocks like adders, multipliers, memory, busses etc. What do you guys use to make some nice looking pictures? I don't want to spend days learning Corel Draw or something huge like that.

Thanks, Reinier

Reply to
Reinier
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OpenOffice has a good drawing tool ("Drawing"). You can even export directly to several image formats, PDF and SWF (Flash).

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Cheers.

--
PabloBleyerKocik
 pablo          /"Reliable software must kill people reliably."
  @bleyer.org  / -- Andy Mickel
Reply to
Pablo Bleyer Kocik

Never used, but heard of Dia:

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It is claimed to be a Visio replacement. Its multi-platform and free. Give it a try.

EG

Reply to
Engineering Guy

Open office and dia are the best of the free, but you will spend many days to get the first "nice looking picture" out of the printer.

Unless you have a paying audience for your artwork, consider sketching the block diagram in your notebook and spend the time you save cleaning up your source code/schematic and simulation testbench.

-- Mike Treseler

Reply to
Mike Treseler

If you have linux/unix -- Xfig is the tool..I have never used any other tool after trying it. You have to spend an hr or so learning it.

Reply to
Praveen

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

BTW, I found an ancient Win95/NT program (Flow!) in the office that was just collecting dust.

Thanks for your input! Reinier

Reply to
Reinier

I haven't tried it yet, but I gather that Open Office 2 (solid beta available) has better flowcharting functionality.

Reply to
David

Here is how to use it on windows:

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cygwin is available at:

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or alternatively you can try WinFig at:

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EG.

Reply to
Engineering Guy

I have released a program called Circuit Scribe that is designed to produce decent looking circuit/schematic drawings, as well as netlisting (downloadable from

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which also has sample drawings and online help)

You could create a custom library of your building blocks, with pins defined for the inputs/outputs to suit your flow chart requirements. Then if you want to rearrange the blocks, the interconnections will be rubber-banded. Drawing programs that don't do this are a real pain.

Colin Seymour

Reply to
Colin Seymour

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