schematics software running on linux?

[shell.albert]

Hi,
Is there any software for circuit schematics design that can be runned on linux? such as Protel,PowerPCB,etc.

I just want to give up windows environment,study linux using heart!


Thank you!

 

[lockman_akim]

you can install any windows program by installing Wine to your linux..

 

[bluehole]

Hi,
Is there any software for circuit schematics design that can be runned on linux? such as Protel,PowerPCB,etc.

I just want to give up windows environment,study linux using heart!


Thank you!

There is gEDA, kiCAD tools for all sorts of schematics drawing under linux.

Even Eagle is available for Linux.

 

[rapidcoder]

Except that gEDA and kiCAD schematics are a joke. They feel like created by a 1st year engineering student (not IT), especially kiCAD. I admire people that can work with its GUI.

But don't worry. We are planning to release a brand new schematic and simulation program that works on Linux seamlessly (thanks to Java platform), soon. If everything goes ok, a beta should be ready in half a year.

 

[Tahmid]

Hi,
I think a good software would be EAGLE. Download it using the Software Center. Or use WINE and install some Windows app. Many Windows apps run absolutely fine using WINE. Just check the site to see the known flaws. Search over here: WineHQ - Wine Application Database

Hope this helps.
Tahmid.

 

[srizbf]

under linux , for schematic drawing the king is
"xcircuit".

for pcb , just use "plain xwindows version of pcb" or the geda version of pcb.

no need to go for anyother.

 

[rapidcoder]

xcircuit, pure XWindow application, soooo 70's...
But at least this one has PostScript export, which is nice if you want to make good looking (paper) publications. Most of modern software, even commercial, produces schematics that look like crap (noone heard of vector graphics or antialiasing).

 

[bluehole]

Except that gEDA and kiCAD schematics are a joke.

Well Something is better than nothing, is not it ;-)

They feel like created by a 1st year engineering student (not IT), especially kiCAD. I admire people that can work with its GUI.

Right those are projects started by students and hobbyists.

But don't worry. We are planning to release a brand new schematic and simulation program that works on Linux seamlessly (thanks to Java platform), soon. If everything goes ok, a beta should be ready in half a year.

You are most welcome, I personally want to see a better open-source package for EDA
and CAD too. Java is good but it takes a lot of memory will you reconsider writing it in C++ and some platform independent GUI tool kit? Well this is just a request

---------- Post added at 05:44 ---------- Previous post was at 05:41 ----------

under linux , for schematic drawing the king is
"xcircuit".

for pcb , just use "plain xwindows version of pcb" or the geda version of pcb.

no need to go for anyother.

You are right but to simplify process something similar to Eagle will be good, is not it?

 

[rapidcoder]

You are most welcome, I personally want to see a better open-source package for EDA
and CAD too. Java is good but it takes a lot of memory will you reconsider writing it in C++ and some platform independent GUI tool kit? Well this is just a request

No, it doesn't take really much more memory than C++, except a few MB more for the JVM itself. In times when everybody has 1 GB or more installed (even cheap Tesco laptops have 4GB these days) this should not be a problem. How large schematics do you want to edit? 1,000,000 elements? We are not targeting it at Intel or AMD. Also by the fact that we can use some advanced techniques like lazy evaluation and higher-order-functions, which are seamlessly supported in the language, we can end up with lower memory consumption than in C++ - e.g. most of the simulation output traces are *not* stored RAM, until someone really needs them.

We are also not considering C++, because we would have to move much slower, write several times more code, probably fight many more bugs, also portability is not as straightforward as many cross-platform toolkits promise (e.g. porting to 64-bit versions). And we could not deploy the application on the Web, which is our top priority - enabling some social networking aspects of it.

 

[bluehole]

Hmmm Nice Idea. Hope to see it soon.

 

[srizbf]

bluehole wrote:

You are right but to simplify process something similar to Eagle will be good, is not it?

Yes. majority of EDA tools in Linux have no integrated approach.

But in xcircuit atleast you can export the schematic to "pcb" format netlist. and start "pcb" afterwards.

IMO , most SW packages of this category assume that users are programmers.

if you ask them , they will reply , to write a script file to export to whatever tool you want.

but that will not workout for a newuser or even users from Windows.

The integrated approach like that of Eagle is available to some extent in some tools but not fully.

and "xcircuit " is "still used from 80's(actually 90's) " speaks its quality
(like Latex)

 

[rapidcoder]

IMO , most SW packages of this category assume that users are programmers.

xkcd: Real Programmers

Not all of Linux / EDA users are programmers. And even if they are, I doubt they like to use software that is unintuitive, clumsy, or requires to know scripting just to make the most basic things. For example GIMP is powerful and probably can do everything that PhotoShop can (scripts!), but PhotoShop has a better and more consistent GUI - which program do you think is used by the professionals more often? It is almost exclusively PhotoShop, although it is not free.

 

[srizbf]

rapidcoder wrote about:
xkcd: Real Programmers

the above link truly reflects the status.
nice.

 

[bluehole]

"srizbf" is 100+1 % right. but still there are programmer they write integrated code too. Personally speaking I encourage my team to write that type of code.