gEDA-dev: [Re: is all EDA as bad as gEDA/pcb?]

[Dan McMahill]

DJ Delorie wrote:
>> Sorry if I sound grumpy too, but I think your buddy is looking for a
>> windows bloatware
> 
> Unlikely.  Russ is a BIG promoter of Linux and Open Source, and has
> been writing free software longer than I have.  I've heard lots of
> people on the sci.* newsgroups make similar complaints - the parts are
> not integrated enough to be optimally usable.  Even if we keep the
> programs separate, we need more automatic communication between the
> various parts to make the whole workflow more streamlined.

 From my point of view, gEDA/pcb is not the easiest to learn but it is 
also far from the hardest.  Anyone here ever use concept and allegro 
from cadence?  I had the misfortune of using them several years back. 
Lets see, broke my own rule about never trusting a footprint I didn't 
create or hadn't used before, used a cadence supplied footprint which 
was horrible.  The concept -> allegro path was certainly no better than 
gsch2pcb and the documentation was worse.  If pcb doesn't have enough 
layers already there allegro had way way too many.  I could go on.

Accel EDA, now PCAD was pretty easy to learn.  Took a few days to go 
from the software showing up in the mail to ordering a board with about 
200 parts on it.  The board Just Worked.  Accel EDA was missing some 
features which would have been fairly critical in a big company.

Cadnetix remains the fastest tool I've used once you learn it.  It 
worked well on a sparc 2 and was killer on a sparc 20.  The most common 
tasks were the easiest.  You could cruise with that tool.  It ran on the 
old sunview windowing system and as such the GUI was not what a "modern" 
program usually presents so it took a bit more to learn.

gEDA/pcb still has plenty of room for improvement, but it is way better 
now than not that many years ago and it is not the worst.  Really what 
would help is more people to program.  I'm over extended and that mostly 
leaves DJ and Ben doing active pcb work.

-Dan