Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SSRP Eagle schematics

[Stuart Brorson]

> Due to popular demand, the LTC1746 board design files are now online.

Cool!

> As far as gEDA goes, tell me more.  How mature is the software 
> currently?  Does the software used for layout integrate well?

Everything I say here is my opinion only, natch.  Also please factor
into this that I not only *use* gEDA, but I also develop for 
gEDA. . . . .

http://www.geda.seul.org/

GEDA's front end, gEDA/gaf is very mature.  It includes schematic
capture (very usable & mature), netlisting (very usable & mature),
a spreadsheet-based component attribute editor -- currently only in
CVS. (It's my baby -- currently usable and almost polished as the
first two apps), and a host of smaller utilities.  The netlister can
export about 20 different netlist formats, including PADS, Protel,
SPICE [1] (a pretty good one, if I do say so myself.  My baby, BTW.)
and some others.      

I have done a couple board designs with it, up to 6 pages (8 1/2 X
11), one or two hundred components.  It can do more easily.  Several
companies use it commercially.  A very nice project done using
gEDA is the Ronja free space optical link: 

http://ronja.twibright.com/

As for the layout tool, PCB, a lot of folks use it.  

http://pcb.sourceforge.net/

The link between gEDA/gaf is very strong; several tools have been
written to facilitate  taking your gschem design into layout using
PCB.  There's a good tutorial on it at: 

http://web.wt.net/~billw/gsch2pcb/tutorial.html

Personally, I don't like PCB.  The interface is old & crufty -- X11
based and not at all up to date in look or feel.  Its operation is
also modal in an archaic way.  On the other hand, it does work, and
people do use it for fairly significant projects (e.g. Ronja).  Also
the developers are very active, so bugs get squashed soon after they
are found.  If only they'd bring the interface up to date . . . . 

However, since you *can* export Protel and PADS netlists as well as
PCB netlists, there is no reason not to use gEDA/gaf.  If you don't
like PCB, your're not stuck -- you have other layout options.  This
isn't true for Orcad, after all!  

> I'd love to use F/OSS software if it can meet the design needs...

Try it out! 

Stuart

[1]  BTW:  There's a fine F/OSS SPICE simulator at ngspice:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngspice