GEDA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The correct title of this article is gEDA. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

gEDA

Schematic capture using gschem.
Author:	Ales Hvezda et al.
Latest release:	20070221 / 21 February 2007 (for gEDA Suite)
OS:	Linux/UNIX
Use:	Electronic design automation
License:	GNU General Public License
Website:	http://www.geda.seul.org/

The gEDA project is a free, open-source, collaborative software project aiming to produce a full GPL’d suite of electronic design automation tools.

[edit] Description

According to the project Web site, “Currently, the gEDA project offers a mature suite of free software applications for electronics design, including schematic capture [using gschem, pictured to the right], attribute management [gattrib], bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into over 20 netlist formats [gnetlist], analog and digital simulation [ngspice, gnucap, Icarus Verilog, and GTKWave], and printed circuit board (PCB) layout [pcb].”

[edit] History

The gEDA project was started by Ales Hvezda in an effort to address the lack of free EDA tools for Linux/UNIX, and the first version was released on 1 April 1998. The tools are developed primarily on GNU/Linux machines, although an effort is made to ensure that gEDA runs on other UNIX variants.

Properly, the term gEDA refers to all free-software projects and applications that have voluntarily associated themselves with the gEDA project (e. g., via the geda-dev/geda-user mailing lists). In contrast, gEDA/gaf refers to a smaller subset of tools “grouped together under the gEDA name” and maintained directly by the gEDA project. According to the gEDA Project FAQ, these tools include (quoting verbatim):

gschem — A schematic capture program
gnetlist — A netlist generation program
gsymcheck — A syntax checker for schematic symbols
gattrib — A spreadsheet programm that manipulates the properties of symbols of a schematic
libgeda — Libraries for gschem, gnetlist, and gsymcheck
gsch2pcb — Forward annotation from schematic to layout using pcb
Assorted utility programs

Finally, the term gEDA suite refers to a packaged distribution of gEDA/gaf and other gEDA Project tools made available as an ISO CD-ROM image in order to simplify and automate the installation of the more commonly used gEDA Project tools.