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I was going to add a bit of information to my post on a previous day using schematics and some instructions. What programs are being employed for this purpose.

I mostly want to see what others are using and that I can easily use to give descriptive schematics.

In a perfect world, and I know this is a case of me wishing, it would be:

Free.
Extremely easy to draw schematics in.
Allows simple production of waveforms for the inputs/outputs.

Would enjoy any pointers people could toss me. -Max Murphy

flag	asked Dec 15 at 3:40 Kortuk♦ 2,989●5●19

I know this question has gained quite a bit of attention, and I am happy to see it. I am going to give just a few more weeks and then accept an answer. A solution that hits my requirements does not seem to exist, so I will try to accept the best option. – Kortuk♦ Jun 6 at 18:30

starblue · Answer 1 · 2009-12-15 13:43:51Z UTC

10

gschem of geda makes nice schematics, with real fonts.

It's free software (GPL license).
It's as easy as it gets. All the schematic capture programs need some learning.
I've not tried that, but there ought to be something in the gEDA suite.

answered Dec 15 at 13:43

starblue
856●1●1●7

	Thanks for the info, I will take a look at it. – Kortuk♦ Dec 15 at 20:28
	WOW have never heard about geda, did an apt-get and checking it out now. Really cool, thanks for sharing! – morgellon Dec 17 at 3:01
	Since 'me' resurrected this thread with the Webtronix program a few hours ago, I thought I'd add for future reference that gEDA does include the Icarus and GTKWave simulators. These take more work than an LTSpice simulation (You either have to add simulation data to all the parts you use, or write up a Verilog simulation), but gEDA (Unlike most PCB design packages) definitely does have a simulator. – reemrevnivek Jul 14 at 2:06

markrages · Answer 2 · 2009-12-16 22:12:15Z UTC

10

My favorite schematic capture tool is a pencil on green-gridded engineering paper, and a camera.

Once I have the schematic how I like it, it goes into gschem.

But for just sketching up circuits, paper is the way to go.

alt text

edited Dec 16 at 22:12

answered Dec 16 at 16:43

markrages
202●5

1

I keep a field notebook around for that. It comes gridded, with ruled pages opposite for notes. It's also water-resistant, so if it comes with you everywhere and you live in a rainy climate there's an extra level of protection. – Lou Dec 16 at 16:52

I have design journals around that look the same, but I doubt my boss would enjoy me jotting down things for chiphacker in them. – Kortuk♦ Dec 16 at 18:13

Point taken on the picture, I wish I always had paper with me. I also wish my handwriting was readable. – Kortuk♦ Dec 16 at 23:03

This is what I do at work, too. I just scribble something down, take a picture of it, and email it to the factory. :) – endolith♦ Dec 17 at 21:31

I use a scanner (better quality for line drawings than camera) + paper/pencil. Looks great! – Jason S♦ Dec 20 at 15:18

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David Brenner · Answer 3 · 2009-12-15 04:18:17Z UTC

7

Probably not the best solution, but most of time I use Eagle to make schematics. Now, that doesn't really cover points 2 and 3 of your requirements, but it's what I use. Additionally I frequently use OrCad PSPICE.

I would, however, strongly recommend gEDA http://www.gpleda.org/

answered Dec 15 at 4:18

David Brenner
397●6

	Eagle is a good idea too as long as you have the libraries all set up. Plus if you plan to make a board eventually, this would be a good start so you can later get a board layout going. – Chris Gammell Dec 15 at 14:56
	I am not planning to make a board, I have programs for doing real schematics and layouts, the problem is that they have a large overhead in my time when it comes to me answering something on this board and require a dongle, which means I do not have them at home. – Kortuk♦ Dec 15 at 18:27

endolith · Answer 4 · 2009-12-18 03:06:40Z UTC

Another option is KTechlab. I suspect most people have never heard of it, but it's a free electronics simulation program that lets you do simple circuits. Schematics are easy to draw and it produces waveforms easily. I find it more intuitive and quick than a SPICE simulator, but of course it's not as powerful. It's more a system for thinking about idealized circuits, while SPICE is more a system for modeling real-life circuits, along with all their flaws and frailties. It's Linux-only, but you can run it in Virtualbox or something.

Chris Gammell · Answer 5 · 2009-12-15 03:55:26Z UTC

Usually whenever I'm doing this, I'd just plop out a circuit in SPICE and then print to a PDF. Not the most elegant solution, but not the most difficult either.

LTSpice is free and pretty great. Also, I hear they keep waveforms inside some of those circle and triangle things on the schematics, just need to push some buttons to let them out :-)

Is this what you meant? Or did you mean something that is modifiable like a GoogleDocs for schematics? That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

MrEvil · Answer 6 · 2009-12-15 05:36:17Z UTC

5

I personally use Eagle but the learning curve is somewhat high. You might want to check out Fritzing, it's open source and built with the beginner in mind.

answered Dec 15 at 5:36

MrEvil
223●4

I know how to do schematics/simulations/layouts and I am not finding this to be the issue. The problem I have had is having one that is very fast to use for when I want to give more detailed answers on chiphacker. I have some time for chiphacker, but not enough to be doing full simulations for questions regularly. – Kortuk♦ Dec 16 at 6:43

2

The simple/intuitive nature of Fritzing will lend itself to your goals I think. I encourage you to take a look. – MrEvil Dec 16 at 10:24

Fritzing seems to have a lot of community potential. If it takes off in the same way as the Arduino project, it could be really great. Right now, it's lacking some essential components, but seems to be moving forward. – Greg Jun 16 at 14:27

DoxaLogos · Answer 7 · 2010-03-26 06:45:31Z UTC

5

Surprised no one mentioned KiCAD. It doesn't do SPICE simulations, but handles pretty much everything else. You might be able to use other SPICE tools with it's netlist, but I haven't tried.

answered Mar 26 at 6:45

DoxaLogos
388●2●9

	How bizarre, I went to do an apt-get install, only to discover that I'd already installed it at some other point. I think I'll have a play. – Amos♦ Mar 26 at 10:53
	Despite it's UI, Kicad is really quite powerful for the price (free) - 16 layer boards, Gerber export and no limit on board size. – Peter Gibson May 7 at 2:09
	One up vote for KiCAD. Very good tool. – O Engenheiro Jul 10 at 13:16

martin · Answer 8 · 2010-05-06 09:44:01Z UTC

For more limited media there's AACircuit http://www.tech-chat.de/aacircuit.html

                        ___
                   .---|___|-----.
                   |             |
                   |             |
             ___   |  |\|        |
           -|___|-----|-\        |
                      |  >-------'
                   .--|+/
                   |  |/|
                   |    |
                  ===  ===
                  GND  GND

(created by AACircuit v1.28.6 beta 04/19/05 www.tech-chat.de)

jluciani · Answer 9 · 2009-12-17 16:41:59Z UTC

I use gEDA as well. gschem for schematics and PCB for printed circuit board layout. As an open source example I did a remix of the ladyada Drawdio circuit. The files and documentation are at http://tinyurl.com/bq8pq4

My PCB footprint library and various EDA automation scripts are at http://www.luciani.org

(* jcl *)

Jim · Answer 10 · 2009-12-20 15:08:02Z UTC

4

Personally I don't like the traditional electronics schematics, because I'm normally making stuff for non engineers. So I use Photographs and a regular drawing program to label the components. Thought it may be of interest to people checking out this thread

Posc Board

I like this method as it's easy to understand and quick to draw up. (obviously this picture comes with a key describing each label)

answered Dec 20 at 15:08

Jim♦
1,304●1●8

just curious: what drawing program did you use for the annotations? – Jason S♦ Dec 20 at 15:19

It looks like an effective way to communicate to non-engineers, I normally only communicate with engineers, but point taken for non-engineers. – Kortuk♦ Dec 20 at 21:16

I used adobe illustrator CS4, but I'm sure any old drawing program would do the trick. – Jim♦ Dec 20 at 21:41

3

But that's a parts placement diagram, not a schematic. The schematic is for explaining a circuit's operation, the parts diagram is for building a physical copy. – markrages Dec 21 at 2:26

1

I normally have a photo of the tracks too, unless it's single side surface mount. And No, you're right it's nothing like a schematic. "Thought it may be of interest to people checking out this thread " I just thought it was interesting when looking at sharing circuit designs, it's so easy to take a hi res image nowadays, and sometimes this can share a greater amount of detail for less effort. – Jim♦ Dec 22 at 13:24

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Jason S · Answer 11 · 2009-12-20 15:20:34Z UTC

4

Try TinyCAD: it's open-source. For schematic capture (this doesn't do simulation, although you can export netlists to PSPICE).

(disclosure of bias: I work with the project maintainer)

answered Dec 20 at 15:20

Jason S♦
2,951●1●13

Looks interesting. – Kortuk♦ Dec 20 at 21:20

davidcary · Answer 12 · 2010-06-16 00:09:36Z UTC

2

The same question came up on Wikipedia.

The top recommendation there seems to be Inkscape + a nice collection of public-domain electrical symbols you can download from Wikipedia.

I find that a little surprising, because Inkscape is a general-purpose graphics editor which knows nothing about diagrams or electronics.

answered Jun 16 at 0:09

davidcary

community wiki

	Inkscape outputs SVG images, which is a requirement: 3. It has to be able to export in SVG: the SVG is the format that was proposed by wikipedia for diagrams. It provides the best quality at the minimum space. Most schematic capture programs have the same view you took - Graphics as such (other than PDF export) are useless. Wikipedia wants the prettiest, smallest graphics. What we want is different: The fastest, easiest way to create a schematic and its simulation. – reemrevnivek Jun 16 at 2:14
	Still an interesting solution – Kortuk♦ Jun 16 at 15:16

me · Answer 13 · 2010-07-13 14:14:36Z UTC

Check out this javascript program on google code. It's not ready to be used yet but it's getting close. It doesn't work in IE and it has some glitches. I wouldn't embed it in a web page yet, but you can use it separately. I'm not much of a javascript programmer but with some help we can create our own editor. It won't create waveforms though. It would be awesome if you could somehow include spice models in the xml .I think that would be a little too much for javascript though. this is just for quick sketches.

http://code.google.com/p/webtronics/

Rob · Answer 14 · 2010-07-17 14:02:07Z UTC

http://www.designspark.com/pcb

I recently started to use it and have found that it works ok for whipping up quick circuits etc.

It's by RS Components and does require registration at their website, however the product appears to be free.

It will handle schematics as well as PCB and it is supposed to do Gerber files as well. Note I am not affiliated with RS Components in anyway.

mmccoo · Answer 15 · 2010-07-17 16:38:43Z UTC

I use FastStone capture to post screen shots.

Here are the steps:

ctrl-printscreen
Drag the area I want to capture
It pops up the image
I click on ftp. it knows my domain and where to put it. It makes up a name based on the date. It copies the url to the clipboard
I ctrl-v the url to the insert picture icon

That's it. You still have to have a schematic in your computer but this addresses a large part of your question.

Here's an example:

alt text

Uploading Schematics for Chip Hacker

15 Answers