[sdiy] Schematics Software

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

On May 20, 2017, at 8:23 AM, Ingo Debus <igg.debus at gmail.com> wrote:
> Am 20.05.2017 um 03:01 schrieb David G Dixon <dixon at mail.ubc.ca>:
>> They beat the hell out of Eagle
>> schematics, though (which I used to get from Dan at Intellijel, who did all
>> the layouts of my designs, and I found them very difficult to read).
> 
> Is there something inherent to Eagle that leads to difficult to read schematics? I mean, you can always draw non-legible schematics, no matter which tool you use, but that’s not the point here.

Drawing a schematic is an art. Not every functional schematic communicates the necessary information as clearly as a different orientation and flow. I don't think AI has reached the level where this art can be automated without plenty of human input, so any faults are to be blamed on the humans.

For one client, I worked on a schematic from a famous analog designer (think: four-letter surname, but not Moog) that was basically impossible to understand. I literally had to move the symbols around, rotate them, change their order, and adjust the nets to make it readable. Of course, the original arrangement worked just as fine for the layout and PCB fabrication, but in terms of handing off the schematic to another engineer it was a horrible means of communicating the design of the circuit.

I don't see how this has anything to do with Eagle. The same inscrutable schematic could have been drawn with pen and paper. Perhaps a few of Eagle's stock symbols encourage bad schematics, but those can be changed (I really dislike it when the symbol is a literal translation of the physical layout of the pins, rather than grouping them functionally). Most of the Eagle symbols are good examples of clarity, especially with inputs on the left, outputs on the right, power on top, and ground on the bottom.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting