Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronics/Programs
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[edit] Programs for drawing circuits
[edit] Inkscape [1]
Inkscape has a pretty good interface and nice output, but it's specifically meant for artistic drawing and not diagramming. It satisfies the first three points, but it has nothing circuit oriented. There is a plan to introduce some more diagramming features in the future, but the developers don't want to go too far in that direction for fear of bloating past their primary art focus. They've just added the ability to create program extensions, though, which could be useful for writing some kind of circuit drawing extension. At the moment, it is quite hard to use it for circuits since everything must be made from scratch. It could be possible to make a library of circuit symbols and stitch them together more easily.
As of January 2006, Inkscape supports drawing connections (wires) between anchors on objects, which makes it much nicer for circuits, but still not a complete solution.
[edit] Xcircuit [2]
This program is meant to be used only for drawing circuits for professional publications. It is very powerful, with a huge standard library and very easy to use. It saves by default in postscript, and it can be converted in SVG using Pstoedit. It can optionally export with any quality in PNG. It is not natively multi-platform (it is developed mainly for linux), but it is possible to make stand-alone executables for both Windows and Mac OS X (there is a beta for Windows and Mac OS X) adding some libraries in it. Some of the symbols are kind of ugly.
For more info about creating SVG circuits with it see How to draw SVG circuits using Xcircuit.
[edit] Dia [3]
It is a compromise between the two previous ones: it exports in SVG, it has a small library of electronic components and it has a grid; the bad points are that it can not rotate objects (thus having strong limitations).
[edit] GIMP [4]
It is a programme for raster image processing, so it is not meant to be used for any kind of schematics. It does not support SVG and everything has be drawn from scratch. Anyway it is multi-platform and several people used it on Commons to draw circuits. It could be useful for some post-processing, but the output will not be in SVG.
[edit] Klunky [5]
It can be used to draw basic circuits, and then a raster editing program like the GIMP to modify the screenshots. The Klunky program is public domain, and he has enhanced it with additional components, etc. (See User:Omegatron#Electronics_diagrams. Enhanced version is here.)
Advantages
- Relatively quick, at least compared to drawing components by hand
- Public domain
- Can be enhanced even further with better-drawn components
Disadvantages
- Outputs a raster format
- Everything is restricted to blocks and some compacting to save space is sometimes needed in the image editor afterwards
- Style changes between creators. Even the style has changed for the same creator somewhat, since he switched to the GIMP which has different fonts and smoothing.
Beats drawing it by hand, though, and drawing simple circuits is pretty fast.
User:Poccil has been working on an update to Klunky that generates SVGs directly. This would be the ideal solution if not for the limitation of putting everything in square blocks.
[edit] Microsoft drawings
Advantages:
- Nice-looking output
- Meant for creating diagrams
- Autorouting of connectors
- Snap to grid
Disadvantages:
- Non-free
- Raster output
- Requires drawing each component by hand at least once.
See commons:User talk:Peo#Diagrams for discussion.
[edit] SIMetrix [6]
Advantages:
- Nice looking output.
- Schematic editor cum SPICE simulator.
- Free version with unlimited schematic drawing and editing.
- Selection of colours for components, wires, etc. for easy identification.
- Zooming facility, auto-routing and snap-to-grid.
- Simple placement of components - select and click-to-place with mouse.
- Automatic repeat placement of last component.
Disadvantages:
- Cannot directly save to image (saves only in its schematic file format). We have to do a select all, copy-paste into MS-Paintbrush (or possibly other image processing program).
- Free version has limited simulation capability (not applicable for drawing schematics).
- Not open source
- Most versions are Windows only, especially the free download.
[edit] Circuit Maker60
See Older version and Newer Version. It is a good designer and a good simulator. This is the latest and Live Designer from Altium.
[edit] WikiTeX and gschem
See [7] and [8]. This is a proposal to add schematics directly into the wiki using code and gschem output. The code is incredibly ugly and the graphical output is not great, either.
