gEDA-user: HOWTO configure geda for heavy symbols?

[Stuart Brorson]

> I too am curious about this, although I haven't made the time yet to
> go read the heavy vs. light debate in all it's glory.  Currently, I
> work in a manufacturing environment where every single item we sell is
> made up of a BOM of items that we purchase and assemble in some form
> or another.  Thus, when we place a resistor on the board, it has an
> internal part number so that purchasing can know when it is time to go
> out and buy more of those resistors.  We have a database backend that
> interfaces with Orcad that makes this more or less (depending on one's
> point of view and time remaining to get the darn board out the door)
> easy to select from our parts database.

Sounds a lot like DxDataBook, which is a database front end used to
select parts with DxDesigner (a.k.a. ViewDraw).

> I have wondered how well/if/ that model would integrate with the gEDA tools.

We have discussed exactly this in the past.  Do some searching
through the mailing list archives.

All it requries is for some energetic volunteer to write a database
front end with search facility and then make it export symbol files to
gschem or gattrib.  Also, gschem and gattrib would require
modification to accept input through a pipe or a socket.

John Luciani may have the beginnings of such a system written in Perl.

> BTW, I have also wondered how well/if it is possible/ to share design
> data between the gEDA tools and Orcad.  The little I've looked, I
> haven't seen a converter, and I haven't looked for documentation
> describing the Orcad file format in order to write my own, but I
> figured I would ask.

Doesn't sarlacc do orcad -> gschem?

http://geda.seul.org/tools/utils/index.html

Stuart