[sdiy] Schematics Software

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

On May 19, 2017, at 2:36 PM, Donald Tillman <don at till.com> wrote:
> On May 19, 2017, at 11:18 AM, Quincas Moreira <quincas at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I need to make a nice looking schematics for the build doc for a module kit. I have diptrace but I don't really like the way the schematics end up looking.
> 
> I highly recommend gEDA gschem.  I use it on a Mac.  
> 
> I really appreciate beautiful schematics.  gschem prints using Postscript in pdf, vectors instead of raster, so there are no jaggies.  I was impressed, totally suitable for publishing. 

Thanks, Don. I'm going to have to look into this.

I typically export Eagle schematics at something approaching 1200 dpi, using only black and white so that the image files compress losslessly (no JPEG). Only then do the printouts look good.

I've also noticed that Photoshop can get rid of the jaggies if I scale down the 1200 dpi original to something suitable for the screen if I need to attach a schematic to an email or web site.

Of course, this is all far too many steps to be considered "easy." Now that I think about it, though, Eagle has both scripting and User Language Programs, so I suspect that some enterprising individual has created a vector export for schematics - at least I really hope so...

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting