Schematic drawing program

Dec 25, 2009 23 Replies

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit diagrams with the following features? It does not have to be a dedicated prog for schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD program with schematic capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can be a painting program with these features.


  1. Have a symbols library from which symbols can be selected with a mouse click and placed anywhere on the work space with another click - like brushes in a painting program..


  1. Being bundled with an extensive library of electronic symbols would be a bonus, but this is not essential as long as user-created symbols can be added easily.

  2. Can save directly in popular image formats like bmp, png, jpeg, gif.


kicad open source LTspice

If you don't want to mess with schematic capture as such then give Dia a try. It's a FOSS "Visio-like" app that works well for diagramming, flowcharts, and such. It originated in the Linux world but there is an installer for, and it works pretty well on, Windows. See here

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for Windows and over at
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for the main project page.

Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

take a lot at "TinyCad" on the net..

Oops. I meant Take look at TinyCad..

Must of had too much to drink last night :)

On a sunny day (Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:55:59 -0500) it happened Rich Webb wrote in :

circuit

In the old days I used 'xcircuit' in Linux. It creates postscript files (.ps), and has a lot of ready made symbols. Here a screenshot: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/xcircuit.gif Here the postscript file of that diagram it created: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/xc.ps

2nd Tiny Cad, has potential.

Cheers

:-) Merry Christmas! I already have a copy of TinyCAD that I downloaded quite some time ago, but never really tried out seriously. I installed it just now and had a quick look. The "Export as image file" feature seems to be just what I wanted. I also like the default white background unlike many CAD programs that use a black one.

I haven't tried creating a user library of symbols. If that's as easy as I hope it will be, then this could be just what I wanted. Thanks.

TinyCad comes with quite a library of symbols straight out of the box.

John G.

CorelDraw does not have a library, but you can create the equivalent by making a template.

I already have KiCad and LTspice, but AFAIK they can't save in standard image formats.

Ah, but CorelDraw isn't free.

circuit

Ahh! Thanks for that. I've used xcircuit in the past but had completely forgotten about it. Must be getting old(er).

Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Looks like you might have your solution already, but ExpressPCB

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also has a cad program that's dedicated to schematics. You can use it for drawing only (ie, with no intention to capture the schematic and/or actually make a circuit board.) Very easy to use. Cost =3D free.

-mpm

My Gonzo utilities, of course.

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(3) is not even wrong. The ONLY format you should consider for a schematic is .pdf.

Many thanks, Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073 Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552 rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don@tinaja.com Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

Postscript is just as good, .ps files are also vector based, and can be can be printed directly by most printers.

Set up a Postscript printer driver to print to file, print using this from LTSpice, then use Ghostscript (free) to convert the resulting Postscript file to pretty much any image format you want.

"Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it." (Stephen Leacock)

Yes, and it is absolute crap. It's line drawing is counter intuitive and its library severely limited. Like the rest of the program it is basically rubbish.

Cheers

Ian

Late at night, by candle light, "pimpom" penned this immortal opus:

Try KiCAD. Schematic capture and PCB with extensive bundled library you can add your own to. Dunno about graphic capture.

- YD.

Remove HAT if replying by mail.

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Tim

-- Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. Website:

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