Re: [Help-gnucap] Which Schematic Program

[al davis]

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 14:24, Markus Feldmann wrote:
> does anybody know a schematic Editor?
> gschem seems to be very old and unstable.
> 
> I am working on Debian.

There are two that I know of:  "gschem" and "oregano".

"gschem" makes nicer schematics and has a more complete symbol 
library.  The user interface takes some getting used to, but it 
is not bad after you do.  To simulate, you need an external 
translator "gnetlist", which doesn't work very well.  You make 
the schematic, save it, then run gnetlist with the option "-g 
spice_sdb" which gives you a first cut.  If any nets have text 
names, they will be preserved, so you need a recent development 
snapshot of gnucap that supports text node names.  Sometimes, 
the netlists require minor editing.

"oregano" is much more newbie friendly, but is more limited in 
its capability.  It extracts the netlist automatically, and 
runs gnucap through its menus.

In both, there are some symbols that do not correctly translate 
to a netlist.  In oregano, most that have a counterpart 
translate reasonably, or can be configured to translate 
reasonably.  The configuration is based on a template that is 
user definable.  The "gnetlist" translator is written in an 
all-verb style that requires explicit translation of every 
detail, so only a small subset of the symbols are translated.  
Those that are not supported require programming in guile to 
support.

Overall, I think gschem is better suited to the experienced 
user, who is willing to do a little hacking, and oregano is 
better suited to someone with less experience, such as a 
student.

Neither are as slick as Multi-sim, which hides too much.  I 
think oregano is more newbie-friendly than PSpice.

Both are in Debian.  The version of gnucap in debian is not the 
latest.  Actually, it is the latest "stable version", but there 
have been significant changes, so I recommend the development 
snapshot, which you need to compile and install the hard way.

Debian stable usually has very old versions.  If you want 
something reasonably up to date, use either the testing or 
unstable versions of Debian.