Schematic drawing program

[pimpom]

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit
diagrams with the following features? It does not have to be a
dedicated prog for schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD
program with schematic capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can
be a painting program with these features.

1. Have a symbols library from which symbols can be selected with
a mouse click and placed anywhere on the work space with another
click - like brushes in a painting program..

2. Being bundled with an extensive library of electronic symbols
would be a bonus, but this is not essential as long as
user-created symbols can be added easily.

3. Can save directly in popular image formats like bmp, png,
jpeg, gif.

 

[Joe G \(Home\)]

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit diagrams
with the following features? It does not have to be a dedicated prog for
schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD program with schematic
capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can be a painting program with
these features.

1. Have a symbols library from which symbols can be selected with a mouse
click and placed anywhere on the work space with another click - like
brushes in a painting program..

2. Being bundled with an extensive library of electronic symbols would be
a bonus, but this is not essential as long as user-created symbols can be
added easily.

3. Can save directly in popular image formats like bmp, png, jpeg, gif.

kicad open source
LTspice

 

[Rich Webb]

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit
diagrams with the following features? It does not have to be a
dedicated prog for schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD
program with schematic capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can
be a painting program with these features.

If you don't want to mess with schematic capture as such then give Dia a
try. It's a FOSS "Visio-like" app that works well for diagramming,
flowcharts, and such. It originated in the Linux world but there is an
installer for, and it works pretty well on, Windows. See here
http://dia-installer.de/index_en.html for Windows and over at
http://live.gnome.org/Dia for the main project page.

 

[Jamie]

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit
diagrams with the following features? It does not have to be a
dedicated prog for schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD
program with schematic capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can
be a painting program with these features.

1. Have a symbols library from which symbols can be selected with
a mouse click and placed anywhere on the work space with another
click - like brushes in a painting program..

2. Being bundled with an extensive library of electronic symbols
would be a bonus, but this is not essential as long as
user-created symbols can be added easily.

3. Can save directly in popular image formats like bmp, png,
jpeg, gif.

take a lot at "TinyCad" on the net..

 

[Jamie]

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit
diagrams with the following features? It does not have to be a
dedicated prog for schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD
program with schematic capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can
be a painting program with these features.

1. Have a symbols library from which symbols can be selected with
a mouse click and placed anywhere on the work space with another
click - like brushes in a painting program..

2. Being bundled with an extensive library of electronic symbols
would be a bonus, but this is not essential as long as
user-created symbols can be added easily.

3. Can save directly in popular image formats like bmp, png,
jpeg, gif.

Oops.
I meant Take look at TinyCad..

Must of had too much to drink last night

 

[Martin Riddle]

Oops.
I meant Take look at TinyCad..

Must of had too much to drink last night

2nd Tiny Cad, <http://tinycad.sourceforge.net/> has potential.

Cheers

 

[pimpom]

Oops.
I meant Take look at TinyCad..

Must of had too much to drink last night

Merry Christmas!
I already have a copy of TinyCAD that I downloaded quite some
time ago, but never really tried out seriously. I installed it
just now and had a quick look. The "Export as image file" feature
seems to be just what I wanted. I also like the default white
background unlike many CAD programs that use a black one.

I haven't tried creating a user library of symbols. If that's as
easy as I hope it will be, then this could be just what I wanted.
Thanks.

 

[pimpom]

kicad open source
LTspice

I already have KiCad and LTspice, but AFAIK they can't save in
standard image formats.

 

[pimpom]

CorelDraw does not have a library, but you can create the
equivalent
by making a template.

Ah, but CorelDraw isn't free.

 

[Rich Webb]

In the old days I used 'xcircuit' in Linux.
It creates postscript files (.ps), and has a lot of ready made symbols.

Ahh! Thanks for that. I've used xcircuit in the past but had completely
forgotten about it. Must be getting old(er).

 

[Don Lancaster]

CorelDraw does not have a library, but you can create the equivalent
by making a template.

My Gonzo utilities, of course.

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/gonzotut.pdf

(3) is not even wrong. The ONLY format you should consider for a
schematic is .pdf.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: [email protected]

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[Fred Abse]

I already have KiCad and LTspice, but AFAIK they can't save in
standard image formats.

Set up a Postscript printer driver to print to file, print using this from
LTSpice, then use Ghostscript (free) to convert the resulting Postscript
file to pretty much any image format you want.

 

[Ian Bell]

Looks like you might have your solution already, but ExpressPCB
(www.expresspcb.com) also has a cad program that's dedicated to
schematics.

Yes, and it is absolute crap. It's line drawing is counter intuitive and
its library severely limited. Like the rest of the program it is
basically rubbish.

Cheers

Ian

 

[YD]

Does anyone know of a free Windows software for drawing circuit
diagrams with the following features? It does not have to be a
dedicated prog for schematics and I'm *not* talking about a CAD
program with schematic capture, simulation and pcb layout. It can
be a painting program with these features.

1. Have a symbols library from which symbols can be selected with
a mouse click and placed anywhere on the work space with another
click - like brushes in a painting program..

2. Being bundled with an extensive library of electronic symbols
would be a bonus, but this is not essential as long as
user-created symbols can be added easily.

3. Can save directly in popular image formats like bmp, png,
jpeg, gif.

Try KiCAD. Schematic capture and PCB with extensive bundled library
you can add your own to. Dunno about graphic capture.

- YD.

 

[Tim Williams]

http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms/Elec_Circuit_Rules.html

Tim

 

[pimpom]

That may be, but I've made a lot of $$ with it over the past
few
years.
And, even with its drawbacks (which are few, esp. for the
price) it
will indeed serve the OP's stated needs.
On the plus side, the learning curve is basically flat. You
can be
downright proficient in about 10 mintues time.

But as I said, looks like he has several solutions to choose
from
anyway.
Surely one will serve his needs.

Thanks. I've just discovered that I already have ExpressPCB, but
have never used it (I must have downloaded it some time ago).
I'll try it out.

 

[pimpom]

My Gonzo utilities, of course.

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/gonzotut.pdf

(3) is not even wrong. The ONLY format you should consider for
a
schematic is .pdf.

I beg to differ. It depends on what the schematic is to be used
for. Bitmap-based diagrams are very well suited for illustration
on websites and image hosting sites, with links provided in
forums and NGs.

I use Circuitmaker 2000 for most of my design work and I have
access to Protel. But I sometimes want to present circuit
diagrams as pictures.