Oh my! Another open-source EDA flamefest of sci.electronics.cad!
Dax's comments are very interesting, and he seems well informed
regarding commerical offerings. On the other hand, the open-source
discussion is giving me a feeling of deja vu.
I'll make a couple of points and then disappear again.
* Don Prescott says:
Right......... gimmee the names of some well known companies using
gEDA on serious, mission critcal projects????
Don apparently has a memory loss problem since he asked *exactly* this
question last year on s.e.c. Here's the thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci....t&q=don+prescott+geda&rnum=1#8fb926cc65ee62f8
The point made to Don then (and now) is that this business about
"mission critical projects" is a red herring. (Remember, Don?) GEDA
competes against low to mid level EDA packages. Nobody uses low- to
mid-level EDA packages for "mission critical" projects. That is,
nobody will use circuitmaker, pulsonix, ExpressPCB, Eagle, Kicad, or
gEDA for a 20 layer router board with 622MBps busses requiring
matched-length tracks & 2.5Gbps diff pairs to an optical transceiver.
If you're worried about "mission critical" stuff, then fork out your
$20000 and use Allegro.
On the other hand, if you need to bang out a 4 layer test board in a
hurry, then give gEDA a try. Or if you're a student, hobbiest,
independent consultant, or professional engineer who needs to do a
reasonably simple board in a hurry, it's worth it to try the
open-source alternative. You can easily do a 6 or 8 layer board with
a couple of hundred components.
Yes, gEDA lacks a couple of features (such as backanno from PCB to
gschem), but this is well known and documented in the gEDA FAQ:
http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda:faq
Open-source stuff is completely open about it's features and
drawbacks. Is commerical software?
* Dave Boland says:
If gEDA were brought up to a
usable standard, they would have no problem ...
Folks often assert that gEDA (or other open-source software) is
"difficult to use". This is a naked assertion made without any
support; unfortunately, it creates the same effect amongst uninformed
potential users as intentional, vendor-created FUD. Dave, can you
please call out specific problems in gEDA holding it below a "usable
standard"? I am particularly interested in hearing about stuff you
notice while trying to use gEDA. If you haven't actually used it,
then let us know.
gEDA needs a consistent interface from program to program
GEDA is a collection of programs written by a confederacy of different
programmers who have banded together to create a suite of tools useful
to everybody. There are certainly UI differences between the
different tools. OTOH, at the level of file formats and design
compatibility, the design flow in gEDA is pretty seamless. No Perl
duct tape is needed anywhere. This isn't true of lots of ASIC flows,
but nobody every complains. Think about how different all the Xilinx
FPGA tools are (when run from the command line)! Why do people beef
about gEDA, but ignore Xilinx? Answer: the complainers don't have that
much experience with EDA tools. Just MHO.
Here in New England, the most common board flow (in my experience,
anyway) seems to be Viewdraw -> Allegro or Viewdraw -> PADS. In both
cases, there is a large difference in the UI experience between the
two programs. Like gEDA, the schematic capture program was developed
by a different group from the layout editor. However, Viewdraw can
export flawless Allegro and PADS netlists, and nobody every asserts
that this UI difference is a problem. The same is true of gschem,
which can export over 20 different netlist formats. Maybe 5 or
thereabouts are layout netlists -- for open-source as well as for
commercial (e.g. Protel) tools.
This topic is discussed at greater length in the FAQ linked above.
An hour to install on Linux! I don't think so.
As DJ pointed out, this is (average) time required for the install
wizard to run from begin to completion. The install wizard simply
automates the process of compiling the software from source. You
don't need to be there while the wizard is doing its thing; it runs
itself, unlike a Windows install wizard.
Installing the software from source was chosen for the CD distribution
since it eliminates many of the dependency problems associated with
installing binaries onto unknown systems. It is also consistent with
the GNU/open-source philosophy. If you want to install binaries, the
following package types are also available on the gEDA website: Red
Hat RPM, Debian DEB, and Mac Fink. Check them out here:
http://geda.seul.org/download.html
BSD packages are also available elsehwere.
This is an interesting one. It is certainly true that there is no
good Windows version of gEDA. There are (at least) two reasons for
this:
1. Nobody has stepped up to the plate to make this happen. Most of
the gEDA developers are Linux geeks, and they are not very interested
in producing a Windows port. "If you want to use gEDA, get a Linux
box" is the reigning philosophy. If a new developer does a Windows
port, he will be welcomed into the fold.
2. Some current gEDA developers also feel that a Windows version
would open the floodgates to totally clueless newbies, who would then
flood the e-mail discussion lists with dumb questions and support
requests. GEDA is created by volunteer developers; they don't want to
spend 10 hours/day holding the hands of idiotic and ungrateful
newbies. If you want an example of what can happen to a totally-open
EDA project running on Windows, read some of the idiocy posted to the
LTSpice Yahoo group, or read the constant begging for free cores on
the OpenCores development lists.
A good user guide is also needed.
That's what the two articles in Circuit Cellar (March & April 2006)
are about. There is also a lot of documentation on the web site,
including official docs, tutorials, and an ever-expanding, wiki-based
FAQ. See it all here:
http://geda.seul.org/docs/index.html
GEDA is not difficult to use if you have some passing familiarity with
EDA programs, or you take the time to read the docs. (Unbelieveably,
we have seen total newbies try it without doing any reading, or having
ever run any other CAD software before. That individual whined a lot
on the e-mail list, but apparently got his project done.) Nor does it
look like a DOS program. (What prompted that assertion?)
GEDA is available for free download and has been used (by me, for
example) both at my day job as well as at home for my own projects.
Unlike e.g. Eagle, the stuff you download for free is full-featured --
there is no crippled version of gEDA. I suggest that interested folks
download it for themselves and try it out -- warts and all -- rather
than believe FUD spread around on usenet.
Stuart