gEDA (GPL'ed Electronic Design) In EE Times

Stuart Brorson writes "At long last, today's EE Times published an article about the gEDA project. The gEDA project has developed a mature, GPL'd, Linux-based suite of tools useful for electronic design. Using the gEDA tools, you can take a circuit design from schematic capture, through simulation, to PC board layout and fab. Some example PCBs done using gEDA include the Darrell Harmon's single board computer, and the 'free hardware' Ronja Project. Happily, the advantages of open-source for electronics design were well presented in the article. It's good to see that gEDA is getting some well-deserved press for the excellent work which has been going on from over six years now!"

Comments

gEDA is still lacking a PCB editor...

[Lisandro]

... which, for me, it's a showstopper and forces me to use EAGLE (which is excellent and available for Windows and Linux, but not OSS). PCB seems to be powerful, but i simply cannot get accostumed to it's interface.

The rest of the package is quite good though, and i have to agree, they've come a long way in these six years. Kudos to the developers!

Re:gEDA is still lacking a PCB editor...

[dj.delorie]

PCB seems to be powerful, but i simply cannot get accostumed to it's interface.

As one of the few people actively working on PCB, I can only say this: If you don't tell us what you don't like, we can't make it better. As with all open software, YOU the user are an important part of the development process, even if all you do is [constructively] complain.

Recently, I added user-customizable menus. Have you tried changing the UI to do what YOU want? That's why I added it.

Re:gEDA is still lacking a PCB editor...

[goodie3shoes]

Thanks to Mr. Delorie for his many improvements of PCB. I use very expensive proprietary schematic and PCB software at work, but am quite happy with PCB and gschem at home on my Linux box, where I make DIY projects. I'd like to reinforce that it's easy to whine (whinge) about features and capabilities, but a bit harder to code them.

Mature tools my ass

[raider_red]

We payed millions and didn't get a set of mature tools from the major EDA vendors. How are they expecting to develop the same with no budget?

Re:Mature tools my ass

[rewt66]

No, the problem is that users set the bar very high.

See, OS kernels, compilers, word processors, and that kind of stuff are old hat now. There aren't any staggering breakthroughs being made in proportional-spacing algorithms these days. So OO.o, for example, has not too hard of a time creating a word processor that does just about anything anyone will ever need a word processor to do.

EDA is a whole different ball game. The leading-edge designs that people want to do are beyond the capabilities of the current software, even the software from the major vendors. Users need staggering breakthroughs, just to make the tools adequate for handling the user's current designs.

I'm not saying that open source can't compete here. But it's very different from "yeah, open source can build an OS that doesn't crash." That was a low bar that one particular vendor's stuff had a lot of problems with due to very bad design; OSS cleared that bar quite handily.

FINALLY!

[Thunderstruck]

The last time I had to design a circuit board, the boss told me to find a way to do it for free. We found some demo software on the internet that would print out samples of the board overlaid with a grid. (To remove grid, buy the software.) We then had to print to plastic and scrape the grid off with an exacto-knife.
While I no longer do this kind of work, I am pleased to see future generations will never have to worry about irrational demands from the boss. (right?)

Never Underestimate...

[Kjuib]

Never Underestimate the power of Geeks who are bored out of their mind!!

Re:Hey asshole,

[Lisandro]

never bitch about GPL software. The source is there, so either submit some patches or shut the fuck up. That's the GPL way. I don't, i'm just pointing it out. I've used gEDAs' schematic capture and SPICE simulation and found both to be very mature (and useful). Like i said, it has evolved quite a lot. But a PCB designer is an integral part of a electronic design software; it's pretty sure anything you'll design on a computer will end up on a PCB. Sadly, gPCB was abandoned. I would like a PCB designer well integrated to the suite rather than a separate program, no matter how good.

Coral cache

[pdkrocul]

http://www.dlharmon.com.nyud.net:8090/sbc.html http://ronja.twibright.com.nyud.net:8090/

Re:Mixed-Up.

[Lisandro]

gEDA has a mixed mode simulator program called Gnucap. I haven't tried it, but seems to be quite powerful, even while it's still work in progress.

Re:VHDL + FPGA

[russh347]

Last time I looked, gEDA had no support for VHDL. There is a GHDL project that is sort of useful, for simulation only. For FPGA synthesis, you're pretty much stuck with the Xilinx (or other commercial) tools. Xilinx webpack is available for free (though it's limited), and I've heard that the command line utilities can be made to run under wine. There are also linux versions of the tools, but I don't know if they have the same availability as Webpack.

Two things that bug me...

[SagSaw]

about gSchem:

First, the developer's insistance that power pins on logic IC's be hardwired, in the symbol, to the nets 'VCC' 'VDD' 'VSS' 'GND' as appropriate. Heaven forbid I have a mixed voltage design or have multiple ground nodes.

Second, there seems to be no concept of scale to the components, or agreement as to how large a resistor should be relative to a transitor relative to the connection spacing on an IC. Capacitors and resistors appear larger than inductors, while all the descrite components, IMHO, are way to large compared to the connection spacing on IC's. This makes it hard to create a schematic that is clear and easy to read.

While the interface is really pretty good, they need to put quite a bit of work into the symbol library to make it especially useful.

Open Source in EDA

[wannasleep]

Just few comments to clarify what we are talking about here

First of all, EDA (Electronic Design Automation) is a 30+ years old industry (maybe even 40+, but I wasn't born then). It spans tools whose cost goes from hundreds dollars to few hundred thousands dollars per license. It also spans several fields, from computer science, to systems theory, to physics, to micro-electronics, to chemistry, etc. etc.

The typical flows for a successfull tools are:

• a PhD student or his advisor has an idea, writes papers about it and maybe even implements it. Then he starts a company and they make milions with it. Synopsys and Cadence (the two biggest players of the market) were started like that.
• The same people have an idea and actually have a full implementation and they sustain the basic research. The tool is put in open source fashion (rarely is GPL'd) and every company can modify it. The shiniest example is SPICE . The first version was written more than 30 years ago. Berkeley still owns it and everybody implements variants that are more or less compatible. Either Commercial eda tools (HSPICE, spectre, eldo, adssim) or proprietary implementations that are used within a company (TI spice, ST spice, motorola own spice, etc.). Analog design wouldn't exist without spice.
• Companies try to dominate the market. They figure out that they need to develop and control a platform. They make it open source (of course all its products work on it, more or less). An example is Cadence with open access. The idea of course is opposed by competitors who try to pass their own platform. Eventually they will reach an agreement

Of course, there are plenty of others, like magma's case and also plenty of unsuccessfull ventures, but in general EDA has benefitted a lot from open source, and some of the biggest names in the university are still open source fans.