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Subject: Re: [geda-user] The state of gEDA/gaf (Was gEDA/PCBs diversity, Was: Pin hole size)
From: John Doty <jpd AT noqsi DOT com>
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Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:19:40 -0600
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On Oct 29, 2012, at 2:53 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On 10/29/2012 04:38 PM, John Doty wrote:
>>>> I haven't found it difficult to get people to adopt gEDA. But no 
>>>> layout person I work with is willing to use pcb.
>>> 
>>> What do these people use that they think is so much better?  I like
>>> it just fine.
>> 
>> Osmond, Tango, Calay, PADS. One customer switched from Calay to PADS.
>> For me, the change was a single word in a Makefile. What other tool
>> or kit can do that?
> 
>  None.  gEDA is great stuff.
> 
>  Aren't all of those very expensive Windows-only packages?

Osmond is for Mac. Free as in beer for small designs, not terribly expensive to unlock for big designs. The thing I like about it is a clean, well documented netlist format. That made writing a gnetlist back end for it quick and easy.

I don't know much about the others.

> 
>>> Eight years ago it was a mess, but it's quite nice now.
>> 
>> To me, the conceptual mess remains. As I said, it's like driving
>> through downtown Boston: it's all random special cases, no
>> structure.
> 
>  I dunno.  The boards I make with it work just fine.  Why do I never
> run into these limitations, when I use PCB very frequently, while you, a
> person who just said they don't lay out their own boards, see all of
> these horrible problems?

I can't grok all the magic properties of its peculiar set of abstractions. "Polygon" doesn't mean a geometric object and "elements" are not elementary. The idea that objects are composed of objects composed of objects, ... is missing. The idea that shape and physical properties are independent is missing. 

Now, I thought it entirely likely that represented my own limitations. But then, I suggested it to people with layout experience, and they didn't like it either. Two years ago, I had an experienced mechanical engineer working for me, and I tasked him with learning pcb. He failed. But I haven't had this kind of trouble with gEDA.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd AT noqsi DOT com