[sdiy] Schematics Software

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

D'oh!

I can't believe I hadn't tried this before. In Eagle on the Mac, just Print the schematic and select "print to file." It will create a PDF in which you can search for part names as text, and all the art is vector based so it scales to any resolution. You might have to edit the border and scale to 0.97 instead of 1.00 to get the pages filled out the way you like, but Eagle remembers these settings for the next schematic.

Provided that you're happy with the symbols in the libraries that you're using, this will create something suitable for publishing.

I was so ingrained in the CAD methodology that Eagle inherited, I didn't think of the simple solution. Thanks for inspiring me to look into this in more detail.

Brian


> 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
>