Early CAD Panning and Zooming?

Does anyone know which CAD programs were the first to offer panning and
zooming? This may even be entering in different coordinates for a
different view. It does not have to be "smooth panning."

I found a great article on it here:
http://cgw.pennnet.com/Articles/Art...Articles&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=134265

I am wondering if Romulus in December 1983 was the first place you
could do that.

Thank you,

Greg

 

Hi Greg,

Not sure if you include electronic CAD here but my old Orcad from the
mid 80's could do that. The first CAD system I ever used was Futurenet
Dash, I believe early 80's, and as far as I can remember it zoomed and
panned as well. Otherwise we couldn't likely have designed large boards
on IBM-XT standard CGA screens.

Regards, Joerg

 

Joerg,

I would certainly be interested in electronic CAD as well as
mechanical/architectural. I have been reading about early CAD programs
generally recently and I am fascinated by the early work.

Do you have a link to something that might list the different versions
of Futurenet Dash or perhaps even the capabilities of each version?
Thank you,

Greg

 

The DOS orcad that I used, even the first version I had in '86 or
thereabouts, did panning very nicely. Unfortunately the current windows
version dosen't, as they've "improved" it.

 

Yep. I was an OrCAD fan until they went with their own Windows "ESP"
crap.

Now. If OrCAD ever drops the ability to use PSpice Schematics as a
front-end and tries to force Capture down my throat I'll be history
and their most reputable bad-mouther ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

Hello Greg,

Unfortunately no and a Google entry came up rather dry for the older
Dash versions. As far as I can remember it was sold to us by Data-IO. If
you are doing a serious history search they might be able to dig
something up.

It was great software. It never crashed on me, not once. Well, neither
did DOS. OrCAD SDT, also a pretty old editor, was rock solid as well.
With anything after that I had crashes galore.

After a few days of 'boiler room style' schematic entry on Dash the
displays became hazy. Then we had to get some stuff from the janitor's
room and clean the nicotine/tar layer off the monitors because these
were the days when some of the engineers chain smoked when having to
concentrate. I never figured out how they managed to smoke and edit at
the same time...

Regards, Joerg

 

Hi Jim,

So what is your normal tool sequence from PSpice Schematics through
sending it all off to the chip layouter?

I recently went Cadsoft/Eagle for schematics. It's really nice for
RF/analog and has a powerful user language and scripting in case I have
to do 'crazy stuff'. Cost is reasonable, too.

Regards, Joerg

 

ESP is not needed. It was only a "convienient" front-end for the
regular tools. I've always deleted the ESP crap.

Mark

 

I can say that Omation's SCHEMA III was incredibly fast for panning and
zooming in the early 1980's, even on a 286 running DOS.
Since screen resolution was shabby back then, it was vital to be able to pan
across larger sheets.
Nothing else in my expereince could match it until much more computer power
became available.

On the other hand, creating new components was always an interesting
experience!

Seems to me that Accel or Tango bought Omation and took this package off the
market.
I remember speaking to the sole remaining Omation support person a few times
before the package faded away.

B.T.W. I offer a service to convert Omation schematic files into other CAD
formats, PDF's or hardcopy outputs.


John Strupat

JST Limited
77 Elmwood Avenue East
London, ON
CANADA N6C 1J4

Tel. 519-857-8504
FAX 519-857-8624

www.JSTtech.com




for schematic capture on

 

I did autorouting on a board once, while driving from LA to Vancouver BC, on
a Toshiba 1000 laptop.. Took same computer out in a rowboat, and routed
another board while floating exactly on the international border, about a
mile off point roberts Wa.

Autorouting on a slow 286...

 

Joerg ... One of the big big annoyances I had with Eagle was that the
component-power-pins were not accessible. The proggers seemed to assume that
all designers were locked in a 1970's timewarp and designed wholly using 5V
rails. This meant ugly dismantling (invoking?) of every component. I packed
it in because of this and their libraries abortion.
You've given Eagle a thumbs up. I've respect for your opinion. does this
mean this kind of thing is no longer a problem?.
regards
john

 

"Layouter" uses my schematics to do the layout, and I generate an LVS
netlist (connect-up, but no strays) that the "Layouter" imports to
compare to the netlist from the layout tool.

I often use the "Layouter's" extracted netlist to re-run a simulation
verification.

...Jim Thompson

 

I used an ancient version of Racal-Redac in 1982 that was panning and
zooming . Ran on an equally ancient IBM XT .
best regards,
Matt Tudor

Greg wrote in message

 

In sci.electronics.cad, john jardine wrote:

EAGLE still has this problem... this is one thing I don't like on it.
Otherwise, EAGLE is rather good.

[]s
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Canoas, Brazil - 29.55° S / 51.11° W / GMT-
2h / 15m

"He [Babya] is like the Energizer Bunny of hopeless newsgroup
posting....or should that be Energizer bBunny"
- "ceed" on alt.comp.freeware, 24/1/2005

(to some groups: Yes, I use Windows and MS Office. So what?)

 

Presumably you could just lie, and put your 3.3V or whatever rails in
just as pins?

Paul Burke

 

I got given a version of that free at a show in about 1987/8. Never did
use it, though, sadly. The operation manual seemed to have been written
by an army drill sergeant.

Paul Burke

 

All of this is very helpful.

If any of you have an old manual or other documents, I would gladly
compensate you for shipping and digging it out of the garage. Send me
an email if you think you might have anything like that from before
1984.

Thank you,

Greg

 

Hello John,

I believe it still is but there were quite a few threads about this on
the Eagle newsgroups along with some work-arounds. I don't remember how
it went but Eagle has a pretty powerful user language programming
capability, you can coax it into doing almost anything. Usually someone
else already has and posted the respective ULP file. I haven't yet
checked for that though because I design analog circuitry, mostly at the
transistor level.

Sometimes you may have to ignore a few ERC squawks regarding power pin
names on different nets but I have experienced that in most CAD
programs. My logic stuff typically goes onto the same rail, except for
parts that I use in a more analog fashion and there you can create
another part with separate supply pins. One example would be the
CD4007UBE. Not nice but as long as it works, oh well.

My biggest gripe with Eagle is the inability to create a hierarchical
sheet structure. This is almost a must in a heavily regulated
environment such as med electronics. So for now you have to create a top
layer sheet that is structurally separate from the sublayer sheets.
Several of us placed it on the wish list. After all, Christmas will be
here again in another 11 months ;-)

Library part generation also isn't quite as easy as with OrCad. I am
sorely missing the non-graphical part generation. But after some
pondering and considering the high cost of most other editors I decided
to go for Eagle.

If you need Spice fully integrated with your editor like Jim does, Eagle
may not be the ticket. But for non-IC level designs, running Spice
separately isn't a big deal. Sometimes I catch myself writing the Spice
file on MS-Word. Oh, now I gave away my age....

Regards, Joerg

 

Hello Matt,

Yes, I remember that one. But ours was a bit more ancient, it ran on a
mainframe that filled a space the size of a corporate board room. Very
rugged software, no crashes. As long as nobody bumped into the 'platter
box', a hard disk the size of a Maytag washer.

As someone mentioned before zooming and panning were absolutely
necessary with these early programs simply because of the very limited
resolution of the screen. My first laptop, afair, 'boasted' 200 pixels
vertically. No backlight but many hours of battery life. I designed
dense boards the size of a B size sheet on it.

Regards, Joerg