After hearing the rave results in this ng about Rimu, I downloaded it over the winter college holiday and gave it what I consider a fair go. Most everybody who posted here was so pleased with the intuitive interface and ease of learning.
I found exactly the opposite. Perhaps it is because I was expecting a bit more of a "user's helpfile" than was supplied with the product. Perhaps I'm too indoctrinated after ten years of CM/TM to learn new tricks. WHatever.
I'm still willing to give it a go. I went to the link page that is supposed to give you hints and tips and wound up more confused than ever.
Anybody who uses it have any advice before I blow it off the machine?
I don't know Rimu but AFAIK it's schematic only. With Eagle you'd get layout as well. Anyway, using an editor that is not well known has posed problems for me in the past. I finally went to Eagle because OrCad licenses became expensive but often the layouters have to redraw the schematics. Not a big deal but a source of errors.
At least I can find some layouters who can read and back-annotate Eagle schematics. I could iamgine that becoming a real challenge with a Rimu schematic file.
No, Rimu has a pcb layout routine, but no autorouter. That's no real big deal because I'm using it for audio and RF only, no digital, and it is a lot easier to preroute the critical paths and then just do the rest of the ratsnest one by one until you are done.
Incidentally, this is Rimu's biggest problem for me right now. I can't patch the most elementary schematic over into the pcb layout routine and have it import the part footprints.
I tried Eagle also, and as I don't use it every day, or even every week, I have to relearn the damned thing all over again every time I use it. It is very well documented and I even have a pay-for license for the advanced version of it, but it is also very counter-intuitive.
I really wish somebody that had to USE schematic/pcb routines every day would buy the CM/TM rights from Protel and work the few minor bugs out of it. I'd much rather sell a thousand packages at $200 than 200 packages at $1k. Or more.
It's already been mentioned, I believe, but relevant to your most recent posts would be Pulsonix again... they were smart enough to license the SPICE engine (SIMetrix, which is quite good) and autorouter and the newest version knows how to save ORCAD schematics -- with a pretty decent degree of success --, which is a big plus for being able to ship a design off to someone else to layout the PCB.
For the money (it's just about free in my book), Rimu looks really nice (from a certain point of view, the value per dollar could even be better than, e.g., gEDA in that you save a bunch of your _own_ time using it, even though gEDA is free to start with!). Somewhat ironically, though, unless they develop an autorouter themselves, I doubt it'll ever have one -- the price points they're looking to sell their software at wouldn't support their licensing anyone else's. Hmm... perhaps the gEDA people will make one someday?
For whatever odd reason, "value" priced software seems sorely neglected in this world. There's all the hobbyists who seem to be limited to about $500 or less (and unfortunately a very large percentage of them are looking for "free" -- pirated or not -- even then), and then there's the commercial world where sometimes a low price is actually considered a BAD thing because "surely you get what you pay for, right?" Software like ORCAD and PADS strike me as _incredibly_ poor values for the money if you're a first time buyer, although I can see the argument that (sadly enough) it's sometimes cheaper to keep them around then spend the money re-training your people.
That's an interesting observation, Joerg. I teach flying on the side, and one of the very best students I ever had was in for "recurrent training". He came in half an hour early for the training and I said that I thought the lesson was for half an hour later.
He allowed that it WAS for half an hour later and that he just wanted to come in and read the aircraft operations manual for a bit.
Turns out he was a retired airline captain/bushpilot/testpilot and had over
30,000 logged flight hours. He knew that manual better than I did, although I flew that airplane every day of my life for ten years.
"Real" engineers take the instructions and make sure that they know how the "other engineer" designed the gear, then take appropriate steps to push the envelope.
Then again, the flight envelope is speed along the X axis and altitude along the Y axis. A very smart Naval Aviator once noted that we push the upper right hand corner of the envelope, and that is where the stamp gets cancelled.
I've always prided myself for not needing a map... then I got caught up in that freeway snarl around BWI :-(
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
It\'s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Eagle has them both in the same library part and transfers well. As long as the library part is correct (the ones that come with it need to be verified).
I found the docs that came with the Eagle license to be not so stellar. Not nearly as detailed as the thick book that came with OrCad. I don't do layouts myself but have a layouter I can trust about 30 miles from here. Sure I could do it myself but he knows all the ins and outs of the fab houses and then I can be sure that the layout flies at the first round.
Playing around with the Eagle example projects does help a bit. After a while I found I could do almost anything I wanted with it. Except for a hierarchical sheet structure (a huge disadvantage IMHO).
CAD pricing is weird. Some companies think that >>$1000 for schematic only is going to fly. Not for me, that was the main reason I switched to Eagle. If OrCad had kept it at around $500 I'd have stayed with them.
Baltimore Washington Int? I always found things rather sane around there. As long as you know what direction you're headed... I did get "lost" in DC one time, within sight of where I wanted to go (I95-N). Yes, my wife demanded I ask the cop on the corner for directions, three times (same cop - same corner - less than perfect instructions).
Another time we were "off track" (I knew where I was going, just found an "interesting way to get there) in DC in a rather bad area about three days before Christmas, with the inlaws and mom in the car. We were stopped at a light and there were three "young ladies" in boots, miniskirts, and rabbit jackets on the corner. My mother rolled down the window to hear the "carrolers". It took some convincing from my wife to convince mom that these "ladies" were doing work other than singing. That was 30 years ago and she still laughs about it at 92+.
Then again, real engineers tend to shun any written instructions, at least until the sparks fly. And they don't ever ask for directions either until that sign "Caution - Pavement ends" cometh :-)
The only reason I don't ask for directions is because you can ask six different people for directions and get six different answers. And in Southern California, nobody in the convenience stores or gas stations speaks good enough English to give comprehensible directions anyway. Even the American ones. ;-)
That 30,000 hours is probably why he was so cautious. He must have gone through tons of 'gear not getting locked' or similar situations and depending on where you are the outcome can depend on how good you know the POH. Not where it is but what's in it.
Some of those bush pilots are really great. We had one who took us up in an old Dornier 27 from which we then all departed in mid air. One day the engine was coughing a bit. He was a man of few words, other than cussing when ice developed. When asked what it was he said "fourth cylinder". It was the 4th cylinder.
True, I was just joking. Sometimes it saddens me when folks ask basic things on the Cadsoft Eagle newsgroup. I answer them anyway but sometimes you could just reply "page 112, 2nd paragraph".
When I got Eagle I had just laid some heavy tile and my back went out right after the package arrived. So I took those two days of bed rest and carefully studied the booklet from cover to cover, twice. Gave me a running start.
Their job sometimes requires them to use whatever is there. This guy could land that trusty old tail dragger with the engine out, do a smooth three point touch-down and roll it out right in front of its hangar.
A bit off-topic, but in the vein of the thread, I got a call one morning from a client I had installed some software for, in a panic because when he went to boot the computer, it said, "ntldr not found". I said, "Oh, pop out the floppy."
And then there was that phone support for the video game, where after about 10 minutes of tracing circuits down, it turned out that he had forgotten to turn on the power switch.
I'd see it as indicative of a pilot who knows every single rattle.clunk and squeak in his machine. I'd arther one who did know what the problem was, than one who says "wonder what that might be".
I did a design job a couple of years back, and the client was evaluating the prototype. He rang me at a rather indecent hour of the morning to say "it's oscillating! What's wrong? What do we do?" Being barely awake - but having lived and breathed that project for months - I replied "I bet your output leads are too long or too thin. Fix that!" and hung up.
Later in the day, I attended their premises and ascertained that they had chopped about 12" of lead off, and everything was percolating as it should. They asked "how'd you know?"
Sounds like that call I got one day, about 10 minutes before our Christmas dinner no less. "Did you terminate the output of the mixer at J3?" ... silence ... grumbling ... some more silence ... "aaaw, shit, sorry about that, ... awfully sorry".
That is an easy fix. How about a panic call from a large high school on the first day of a new school year. They are very upset that the intercom system isn't working. I drove to the site and pulled it out from the wall to find that the roof had leaked over the summer and damaged their 100 watt tube amplifier. The school board's maintenance people had fixed the roof and repainted the office, but didn't report the water damaged electronics. The principle wanted it fixed fast and the school board wanted it fixed cheap. I gave them three options:
Rebuild the old amp: Cheap enough, but not fast enough.
A new amp: Fast enough, but not cheap enough.
Sell them a rebuilt amp of the same model (that I just happened to have in the service truck). They jumped on the offer. It was working within 15 minutes and I was on my way home.
--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
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