gEDA suite vs my creaky old Protel Client 3.5?

Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott wrote: : I'm curious to know how the gEDA suite stacks up against what I'm using. : Two-sided boards with surface-mount and through-hole, no integration : with simulation needed. Hierarchal schematics. Detailed BOMs. Get me : elected Queen of the May if I wish. Just basic stuff.

It depends upon what you want to do. For basic designing of two layer boards, gEDA works quite well. Four is also doable. PCB tops out at

6 layers, so it's not meant for large or complex projects. It has most features of low-end commercial EDA packages, without being crippled or limited to arbitrarily small designs (like freeware Eagle). OTOH, it does lack a couple of features present in commercial tools.

I use gEDA to bang out quick-'n-dirty test boards at work. Here's a 2 layer sensor interface board.

It's nothing exciting, but you can see gEDA/PCB is able to handle all types of components (SMT and through-hole).

I also have done private projects using the gEDA Suite. No photos now, however. Sorry!

Here's the current gEDA project of the month: a binary clock.

The guy doing this project also has some words of advice for those thinking about using gEDA; give his site a read.

You will need to invest a little time in re-drawing your symbols & redoing your footprint libarary, but many of this already comes with the gEDA Suite. You don't get as many canned symbols and footprints as with commercial EDA packages, but most real users generate their own symbols and footprints anyway.

Through hole & SMT stuff is a cinch. Hierarchy does work, but hierarchical bus support is still lacking. Therefore, if you absolutely need hierarchical busses, look elsewhere -- or join us in hacking/improving gEDA!

As for BOMs and attribute management, I like to think that between the various BOM backends for gnetlist and using gattrib (the attribute manager) you will be very content.

A missing piece is backannotation from PCB to gschem. Therefore, if you make changes to your connectivity in PCB (e.g. gate swapping), you will need to manually update your schematic.

Why not download the CD and try it out? The download is free, and the CD makes installation easy -- if you have a Linux box.

Finally, I'd bet that if you post your question on the gEDA-user list, you'd get more reactions and photos from people using the suite. The mailing lists are here:

Stuart

8 layers, or 6 plus two power planes, although if you want a complex outline you use one of the layers for that.

My recent flag changes "open the door" to supporting up to 32 copper layers with a trivial change, or more with a slightly bigger change.

Like?

Here's my project:

I have designed many PCB based boards (2-6 layers) over the years(10 or so). The current versions of PCB has grown to be a very useful and powerful layout tool. It has useful features and most of them work well. When there is a problem, I can usually dig into the PCB files (since they are ASCII) and either fix it by hand or at least understand what's wrong. I have also fixed some problems in earlier version of PCB. Having sources was a lifesaver on at least one project.

The learning curve of PCB is pretty steep, since the documentation is a bit dated. Often I would have to go to the source to figrue out new features. Generating adhoc footprints is easy unside PCB, since you can group copper/silk and then convert then into a component footprint. Never mastered using M4 to parametrically generate footprints, but I have written some of my own tools (Tcl and C) to generate footprints, easy since the files are in ASCII.

I have recently (last year or so), started using gEDA has my primary CAD toolchains. Before gEDA, I would use OrCad under windows to create schematics/netlist and then convert the netlists to PCB. Kind of a hassle, since OrCad didn't run well under Wine and I never bothered to compile PCB under Cygwin.

It took me a little while to figure out how to generate symbols under gschem, and it's still a little cumbersome. However, as I'm learning more features all this becomes easier and faster. gschem is definately more robust than many Windows based CAD tools I have used in the past. I can't count how often OrCad, P-Cad, etc. have hung under Windows, or learned sequence of commands you can't do without chance of crashing. Also, being able to look at and edit the ASCII files is a bonus !

So far I have done 3 double sided boards within gEDA and had no serious problems getting them done. Also, there were no mysterious netlist errors, which I always battled with when trying to export netlist from commercial tools (e.g. OrCad). One of the boards was a prototype for a USB programming dongle board ar work, which had a 32pin QFP, a few connectors and a handfull of SMT parts (0805, SOT-223, SOT-23, SizeA Cap, 2mm and 50mil dual row headers). Only the SMT dual row header require my own custom footprints in PCB. In gschem, I had to make a symbol for a FT232BM, I think that was it.

Features I have not used, are buses in gschem and it's Spice interface. Also, I have not made extensive use of gattrib and the various netlist exporters to generate BOMs, etc... I have not used the auto place function in PCB. And I'm still baffled at the symantics of how gsch2pcb generates the inital layout file, as well as new versions of it; I somehow think orthogonal to it..., at least I'm able to get netlists into PCB reliably.

Finally, I'm just ecstatic that I can run my whole tool chain under Linux now. Also, I find it useful that I can share my designs with almost anyone, since they can run the same tools I'm, as supposed to negotiating what CAD format we use. I did like Eagle, but the file format is closed and you end up having to spend $ to get a useful version, anyway. I would probably like Eagle more and be willing to pay for a full version, if the file format was open. On the other hand, I'm very happy with gEDA, for now.

It's probably easiest to get started pick a non-critical and simple board, grab some of the tutorials on gEDA and dive into it and ask questions or google when you get stuck.

Later, -ingo

--
/* Ingo Cyliax, cyliax@ezcomm.com, Tel: 812-391-0895 */

In the default pcb-gtk settings, you've got component, solder, gnd, power, signal1, signal2, unused, unused. Eight. You can rename them or group them, but as far as the internal are concerned, they're just eight copper layers.

The Xaw version of pcb used to default to grouping some of the layers together to form logical layers, reducing the number of gerber plots, but you could always break the groupings to get back to eight individual layers. It's always been that way.

Too late ;-)

Although I don't know if there's a snapshot of it yet, but it is what you get if you check it out of CVS. The Xaw version has been relegated to a branch.

Yeah, we talked about that a bit. I suspect the hard parts are agreeing on a file format and redrawing the schematics if needed. Spitting out the difference between the netlist and the current connectivity shouldn't be *that* hard for pcb to do.

Hi -- OP here. I am a Windows user, so aside from the original curiosity about what gEDA has to offer to me vis a vis Protel Client 3.5, I know that it doesn't run under WinXP, but that is not a s.e.cad matter so I have set that little hurdle aside. So . . . whatever the heck a livecd is, it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA. Count me in if you want to make a few.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
KG6RCR

: Stuart Brors :> PCB tops out at 6 layers,

: 8 layers, or 6 plus two power planes, although if you want a complex : outline you use one of the layers for that.

How do you get 8? Do you have to redefine the layer buttons on the left? If so, how do you do that?

: My recent flag changes "open the door" to supporting up to 32 copper : layers with a trivial change, or more with a slightly bigger change.

Awesome! Thank you!

Note to the OP: A new, GTK-based version of PCB is slated to be released any day now, so some of the usability issues which others have mentioned will be reduced.

:> OTOH, it does lack a couple of features present in commercial tools.

: Like?

The biggies are: 1. no hierarchical busses in gschem, and 2. no easy backannotation between PCB and gschem.

Last year somebody submitted patches which implemented hierarichal busses. However, the code was apparently incomplete & buggy, and never made it into the main development branch.

As for PCB -> gschem backannotation, we have discussed this in some of our Free EDA meetings, and I have an idea of how to implement this in the gEDA/gaf file format. The project just awaits a developer with time to tackle the job. (I don't right now.)

There are also some little issues, like gattrib doesn't print, and won't handle net or pin attribs yet. Missing features in gattrib are my fault. Also, the project manager "geda" is still buggy. As far as I can tell, most power users bypass the project manager and run the tools individually from the command line. The project manager doesn't seem to be actively supported right now; it's stuck using GTK-1.2.

In conclusion, lots of folks use gEDA/PCB for real work. It works fine for small-to-mid-sized projects. It has several features which make it better than comparable commercial tools, e.g. Linux based flow, less buggy than Protel, all ASCII file formats, rapid bugfixes, not crippled, etc. However, it isn't perfect (although it's close!), and lacks a couple of features (hierarchical busses & backanno). If you absolutely need those features, gEDA isn't ready for you -- please check back later. But if your boards are simple enough that you don't need these power features, then check out the gEDA Suite -- it's available for free download, so you can always try it and make your own decision!

Stuart

There was an article about gEDA in Circuit Cellar, March issue. I read it because I was considering using it and wanted to reduce the learning curve (never enough time and no one will pay me to learn something). I likely won't be using it now, but I'd like to share my thoughts (sent to the article authors) and all of you can comment as you see fit.

1. The article was a nice introduction, but not enough detail for me to feel comfortable doing a project yet. Hope they will do a series of articles on using all of the gEDA facilities, which are impressive.
2. What would be nice is a book similar to "Build Your Own Printed Circuit Board" (by Al Williams), which uses Eagle. This is a very good hand-holder, but not a great reference text. Still, it serves the purpose of getting people started with Eagle. I'm using Eagle because a free version came with the book. The problem is that who has the time to write a book!?! Doing a book is really a project in its self. An example of a good e-book (on Knoppix) is at:
   formatting link
3. May as well go whole hog (so to speak) and then do a livecd with the complete gEDA system on it. This is another bit of work, but I seem to use livecd's more than I ever thought I would, and it would serve as a bridge to Windows users.

Have a good day.

Dave,

If you get an electronic subscription to CC, you can (at the moment, hurry) download the March 2005 issue, which had the gEDA article. Otherwise, eventually you'll probably be able to buy it as a back-issue.

A live CD is bootable. (You don't have to install the OS on your HDD.)

Usually thought of in terms of Linux (Knoppix is at v3.8), there are also some Windoze live CDs:

The reference in this thread is to a task-specific live CD. There are such critters here (security, multimedia, games), mixed in with the general-purpose variants:

To make a CD that boots Linux and opens gEDA is the Holy Grail to many long-suffering Windoze users (a bridge between a broken OS and a UNIX-like environment). It does not currently exist. As Stuart points out (regarding other areas of the project), it will take talented people willing to donate their time.

Stuart's .ISO is a distribution for the gEDA suite (no OS). The binaries and installer are for Linux. In theory, you can build a Windoze version of gEDA using the source code (which is available for any such "Open Source" software).

As Stuart says, the last Windoze build is terribly out of date.

How do you know that gEDA doesn't run under Window sex pea?

With Cygwin it runs nicely... (or, so I am told. I don't use microsloth products.)

-Chuck

Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, UPS Worldship, Quickbooks, Quicken .. . . those are my major reasons to stick with WinXP. I'm a one-man show, not just an engineer.

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
KG6RCR

For the click-impaired: Had you clicked the provided link, you would have seen

**Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want to get it running on Windows.**

Had you clicked the 1st item at Google, you would have also seen

**Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality.**

So, to recap: Cygwin is a compiling tool to build Windows programs from source code.

wine is a reverse-engineered set of Windows APIs which run under Linux, callable at runtime.

Aside from providing cross-platform possibilities, they are quite different. Getting non-M$ stuff to run in a M$ environment is more difficult than the inverse.

That's exactly what cygwin is for, isn't it? As I understand things, cygwin is to linux as wine is to windows.

-Chuck

Hello,

your discussion about gEDA is very interesting. For the moment, I have a high-school project where I also have to design a circuit of middle size (in the order of 15 Opamps, 40 resistors and a lot of capacitors, but also some switches, flipflops and mosfets. In spite of the huge number of parts, it's not very complicated).

A few years ago, I used Eagle. Unfortunately, Eagle is not an option here because the lab I currently work in doesn't own a full version of it. So, for a first prototype, I used Protel DXP. And IMHO, I never used such an ugly program before! It is the absolutely contrary to "user-friendly" -- for giving an example, I needed more than half a day of desesperate searching involving half the lab to find out how to print in the /correct/ scale, and that in spite of the manual under my hands.

You can imagine that I would prefer not to use it for the next prototype of my circuit. On the other hand, I do not really have much time these days.

So, what do you think: Is it worth to learn gEDA and to redraw some symbols that might not be available, or should I use Protel DXP, having all parts I need and only loosing time in some trap that Protel DXP might devise? Which choice would save more time ?

because I was considering using it and wanted to reduce the learning curve (never enough time and no one will pay me to learn something). I likely won't be using it now, but I'd like to share my thoughts (sent to the article authors) and all of you can comment as you see fit.

feel comfortable doing a project yet. Hope they will do a series of articles on using all of the gEDA facilities, which are impressive.

Are they available on the internet?

Board" (by Al Williams), which uses Eagle. This is a very good hand-holder, but not a great reference text. Still, it serves the purpose of getting people started with Eagle. I'm using Eagle because a free version came with the book. The problem is that who has the time to write a book!?! Doing a book is really a project in its self. An example of a good e-book (on Knoppix) is at:

Perhaps it could be an idea that interested gEDA uses and programmers create a wikibook, see :

These are books where everybody can contribute.

Yours,

Bernhard

Bernhard Kr?mer wrote: : So, what do you think: Is it worth to learn gEDA and to redraw some symbols : that might not be available, or should I use Protel DXP, having all parts I : need and only loosing time in some trap that Protel DXP might devise? Which : choice would save more time ?

I suggest you download gEDA and try it [1]. Drawing the symbols doesn't take that long. Many symbols already exist, and if they don't then just take a similar symbol and modify it & save it out.

As for layout footprints, John Luciani has posted a whole bunch of symbols on his website:

Here's a quick tutorial which guides you through the whole process of doing a design using gEDA/PCB:

Finally, don't hesitate to install using the gEDA Suite CD distribution. It gives you all the tools (gEDA/gaf, PCB, circuit simulators, Verilog, etc.) bundled together with an automated installer. Get it at:

Stuart

[1] Of course, I am biassed. :-)

:>> 3. May as well go whole hog (so to speak) and then do a livecd with :>> the complete gEDA system on it. This is another bit of work, but I :>> seem to use livecd's more than I ever thought I would, and it would :>> serve as a bridge to Windows users. :> :> :> Hi -- OP here. I am a Windows user, so aside from the original curiosity :> about what gEDA has to offer to me vis a vis Protel Client 3.5, I know :> that it doesn't run under WinXP, but that is not a s.e.cad matter so I :> have set that little hurdle aside. So . . . whatever the heck a livecd :> is, it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA. Count me in if you want to :> make a few.

: How do you know that gEDA doesn't run under Window sex pea?

The last version of gschem compiled to run on Windoze is from 2002. It is quite old. Other tools in gEDA/gaf (e.g. gattrib) won't compile for Windoze at all. (Maybe on Cygwin? I haven't tried. . . . .)

PCB runs under Cygwin I have been told. Again, I haven't tried.

In my vision, gEDA is another reason to break free from the Windoze stranglehold and make a move to the Penguin. If you're an engineer smart enough to design boards, you're more than smart enough to use and appreciate the power of unix. Why stick with an OS which places limits on your own ability to get stuff done? Why use an environment which doesn't seamlessly integrate power tools like Perl, Python, make, CVS, etc. etc. etc??? The beauty of gEDA's ASCII file formats is that you can easily use the above mentioned tools as part of your hardware design flow. Can you do that with Protel or Orcad [1]?

Stuart

[1] Don't tell me about exporting ASCII from Protel -- I've tried it and it is broken. Also, the ASCII format is not the native format, so integration with other tools is far from seamless.

Because good engineers find ways to get stuff down with pretty much any contemporary operating system? I think both Windows and Linux are decent operating systems. A couple of years ago when I last looked at Linux, my two biggest annoyances were that program installation was not standardized between distributions and GUIs and that standard keyboard commands such as cut/copy/paste were also not standardized (e.g., some programs used Ctrl+X for cut, some used Alt+X! -- and I know you can pretty much always change these, but I shouldn't have to spend my time doing that when I'm trying to get REAL WORK done).

I imagine Linux has improved in these respects over the past few years, though; it general it's been improving slowly but surely. (A couple of years ago there, they'd just gotten to the point of doing automatic new hardware detection/driver installatoin at boot time, which was a nice improvement over completely manual installations, even though they hadn't yet gotten to the point of supporting true "plug and play" for things like USB key drives -- which I'm told is there now.)

Windows tends to "seamlessly" integrate power tools like Visual Source Safe, VBA, etc. Yes, it is (often) locking you to the Evil Microsoft Empire, but hey, again -- it gets the job done.

I don't know about Protel or OrCAD, but many Windows PCB/schematic packages have the option to save files either as ASCII or binary -- the later being fast and using less disk space, of course.

The big push now seems to be to get everyone to save their files in XML format -- can gEDA do that? Without at least a little structure to a file format such as that imposed by XML, about the only major benefit I can see in arbtirary ASCII formats is that the 'diffs' work a lot better in version control systems.

---Joel Kolstad

I'm sorry to hear that the gEDA suite is presently not an option for WinXP users. Oh well, looks like me old Protel Client 3.5 is here to stay, at least for a while.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
KG6RCR

Well, you can use all those under Mac OS X, *and* gEDA (I just compiled the latest gEDA myself on OS X over the weekend, to give it my first try---it was not painless, but neither was it horrible; for OS X nerds, this was without Fink). I use all three major platforms all the time (Linux, OS X, WinXP, in order of the amount of time I spend on each). OS X is my definite favorite---the niceties of a commercial OS, with the flexibility and power of Unix. WinXP lags way behind the other two. However, I have to keep it around, not for the non-engineering stuff you mentioned, but for running software for demo and development boards from chip manufacturers, and test eqpt. software. Until *those* folks come around to *nix or OS X, I think WinXP and Win-centric EDA tools are here to stay. Sadly!

-Tom