FidoCadJ: a drawing utility for discussion groups and forums

[Darwin]

Hello to everybody,
discussing about electronic circuits often requires to exchange
schematics.
This is somehow awkward to do on a Usenet group like
sci.electronics.basics or on an Internet forum, since it is not
possible or it is impractical to attach images.
Nowadays, there are some image hosting websites which make this easier
than a few years ago, but if someone wants to correct or modify one of
the posted images, he often needs to redraw it.

For this reason, I would like to announce here FidoCadJ 0.23.5, a
small utility, which has been developed to draw very easily electronic
schematics as well as simple printed circuit boards.
A particularity of FidoCadJ is that the drawing is represented as a
very compact code that can be copy/pasted in a Usenet post, instead of
ASCII drawings. The great advantage is that having the source code
everyone can modify it, without expensive or difficult to use tools,
and the rendering is much better than ASCII.

FidoCadJ is *completely* free of charge and it is a open source GPL v.
3 project. It has a library containing the most common symbols, it is
mutiplatform just requiring Java. FidoCadJ is currently used on
Windows, on many Linux distributions and on MacOSX. Thanks to the help
of many users, FidoCadJ is now available in English, Italian, French
and Spanish.

Here is the link of the SourceForge project dedicated to FidoCadJ:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fidocadj/
You may find the English user manual here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fidocadj/files/fidocadj_manual_en.pdf/download

And here is the link to a web page in which I further describe this
program:
http://tinyurl.com/6k3gcxf

Let's see now an example of a simple circuit containing an operational
amplifier, rendered in ASCII (858 bytes long, to be seen with a non
proportional font):

----+-------- Vcc -----------------+-------
| |
C1 +--------|--/\/\/\---+ -----
| |\ | R1 | ----- C3
|| | | \| | |
In o---||--/\/\/\---+----|- \ | || |
|| R2 | >--------+---||---o Out +-----+
+----|+ / || | |
| | /| | ===
| |/ | U1 C2 ----- =
=== | C4 ----- -
= | |
- ----+-------- Vee -----------------+-------

And here is the same circuit, coded in the FidoCadJ format (859 bytes
long!):

[FIDOCAD]
MC 80 60 2 1 580
MC 105 35 0 0 080
MC 50 50 0 0 080
MC 125 55 0 0 170
MC 30 50 0 0 170
MC 155 30 1 0 170
MC 155 75 1 0 170
SA 95 20 0
SA 95 95 0
LI 75 20 170 20 0
LI 75 95 170 95 0
LI 155 85 155 95 0
LI 155 75 155 40 0
LI 155 30 155 20 0
LI 95 20 95 50 0
LI 95 60 95 95 0
LI 105 55 125 55 0
LI 115 35 120 35 0
LI 120 35 120 55 0
LI 105 35 70 35 0
LI 70 35 70 50 0
LI 80 50 60 50 0
LI 50 50 40 50 0
SA 120 55 0
SA 70 50 0
LI 80 60 70 60 0
LI 70 60 70 70 0
MC 170 60 0 0 045
MC 70 70 0 0 045
LI 155 55 170 55 0
LI 170 55 170 60 0
SA 155 20 0
SA 155 55 0
SA 155 95 0
TY 100 10 4 3 0 0 0 * Vcc
TY 100 100 4 3 0 0 0 * Vee
TY 50 40 4 3 0 0 0 * R2
TY 105 25 4 3 0 0 0 * R1
MC 135 55 0 0 000
MC 30 50 2 0 000
TY 30 40 4 3 0 0 0 * C1
TY 130 60 4 3 0 0 0 * C2
TY 160 75 4 3 0 0 0 * C4
TY 160 30 4 3 0 0 0 * C3
TY 17 47 4 3 0 0 0 * In
TY 138 45 4 3 0 0 0 * Out

If you are curious to see how the code shown above is rendered in
FidoCadJ, you just have to copy and paste it in the program or in the
following applet:

http://davbucci.chez-alice.fr/elettronica/fidoreadj/fidoreadj_800_600.html

Copy it in the text field just below the title of the page and press
"Draw the circuit".

FidoCadJ has had a notable success in Italy and in France and some
Internet forums now adopt it as a standard for the exchange of
drawings. For this reason, it appeared useful for webmasters to have
something to render "on the fly" the format, so that the forum users
do not need anything just to see the schematics in their browser. Here
is a link to the FidoReadPHP project, a GPL v.3 class written in PHP.
It makes it possible to convert FidoCadJ drawings directly on a web
server:

https://sourceforge.net/p/fidoreadphp/home/

Some websites and forums now include FidoReadPHP for the automatic
rendering of the drawings.

If you are interested in FidoCadJ (or FidoReadPHP if you are a
webmaster), feel free to download and test it as much as you want. You
can participate to the development of FidoCadJ by posting a review on
SourceForge or on Ohloh, by spotting typos in the manuals, or by
reporting bugs.
Remember that, as in any open source project, your feedback is highly
appreciated!

Best regards,

Davide

P.S. I am more active on it.hobby.elettronica, but I am often lurking
sci.electronics.basics and sci.electronics.design, so this is why I am
posting this announce here.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2011 08:20:27 -0800 (PST), Darwin <davbucci@tiscali.it>
wrote:

Hello to everybody,
discussing about electronic circuits often requires to exchange
schematics.
This is somehow awkward to do on a Usenet group like
sci.electronics.basics or on an Internet forum, since it is not
possible or it is impractical to attach images.
Nowadays, there are some image hosting websites which make this easier
than a few years ago, but if someone wants to correct or modify one of
the posted images, he often needs to redraw it.

For this reason, I would like to announce here FidoCadJ 0.23.5, a
small utility, which has been developed to draw very easily electronic
schematics as well as simple printed circuit boards.
A particularity of FidoCadJ is that the drawing is represented as a
very compact code that can be copy/pasted in a Usenet post, instead of
ASCII drawings. The great advantage is that having the source code
everyone can modify it, without expensive or difficult to use tools,
and the rendering is much better than ASCII.

Most of us use LT Spice, and just post the ascii schematic file here.
Then people can not only see it, they can play with the simulation.



Version 4
SHEET 1 1376 708
WIRE 128 -48 80 -48
WIRE 240 -48 192 -48
WIRE 352 -48 320 -48
WIRE 656 16 192 16
WIRE 848 16 656 16
WIRE 848 32 848 16
WIRE 192 96 192 16
WIRE -144 144 -176 144
WIRE -96 144 -144 144
WIRE 80 144 80 -48
WIRE 80 144 -16 144
WIRE 160 144 80 144
WIRE 848 144 848 112
WIRE 656 160 656 16
WIRE 352 176 352 -48
WIRE 352 176 304 176
WIRE 384 176 352 176
WIRE 608 176 464 176
WIRE 160 208 80 208
WIRE -176 224 -176 144
WIRE 192 288 192 256
WIRE -176 384 -176 304
WIRE -112 384 -176 384
WIRE 80 384 80 208
WIRE 80 384 -32 384
WIRE 176 384 80 384
WIRE 576 384 256 384
WIRE 656 384 656 256
WIRE 656 384 576 384
WIRE 736 384 656 384
WIRE 912 384 736 384
WIRE 576 432 576 384
WIRE -176 448 -176 384
WIRE 912 448 912 384
WIRE 576 544 576 496
WIRE 912 576 912 528
FLAG 192 288 0
FLAG -176 448 0
FLAG 576 544 0
FLAG 848 144 0
FLAG -144 144 IN
FLAG 736 384 OUT
FLAG 912 576 0
SYMBOL Opamps\\LT1784 192 176 R0
SYMATTR InstName U1
SYMBOL res 480 160 R90
WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 0
WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 0
SYMATTR InstName R1
SYMATTR Value 100
SYMBOL res 272 368 R90
WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 0
WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 0
SYMATTR InstName R2
SYMATTR Value 300
SYMBOL res -16 368 R90
WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 0
WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 0
SYMATTR InstName R3
SYMATTR Value 100
SYMBOL res 0 128 R90
WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 0
WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 0
SYMATTR InstName R4
SYMATTR Value 10K
SYMBOL cap 192 -64 R90
WINDOW 0 0 32 VBottom 0
WINDOW 3 32 32 VTop 0
SYMATTR InstName C1
SYMATTR Value 1n
SYMBOL cap 592 496 R180
WINDOW 0 24 64 Left 0
WINDOW 3 24 8 Left 0
SYMATTR InstName C2
SYMATTR Value 10ľ
SYMBOL pmos 608 256 M180
SYMATTR InstName M1
SYMATTR Value FDS4559_P
SYMBOL voltage 848 16 R0
WINDOW 123 0 0 Left 0
WINDOW 39 0 0 Left 0
SYMATTR InstName V1
SYMATTR Value 12
SYMBOL voltage -176 208 R0
WINDOW 3 -144 -152 Left 0
WINDOW 123 0 0 Left 0
WINDOW 39 0 0 Left 0
SYMATTR InstName V2
SYMATTR Value PULSE(0 2.5 .001 10u 10u .003 0 1)
SYMBOL res 336 -64 R90
WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 0
WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 0
SYMATTR InstName R7
SYMATTR Value 50k
SYMBOL current 912 448 R0
WINDOW 123 0 0 Left 0
WINDOW 39 0 0 Left 0
SYMATTR InstName I1
SYMATTR Value PULSE(0 .06 .002 10u 10u .001 0 1)
TEXT -184 -8 Left 0 !.tran 0 .010 0 100n



John

 

[Darwin]

On 5 Feb, 20:01, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Most of us use LT Spice, and just post the ascii schematic file here.
Then people can not only see it, they can play with the simulation.

Dear John,
I know LT Spice (and I noticed it was used here and in
sci.electronics.design): it is a wonderful tool, but it has an
entirely different goal than FidoCadJ's. The latter for example does
not simulate circuits and is more a quite simple 2D vector graphic
tool.
One of the problems I have is that I can not see the circuit you
posted since I am using MacOSX on an old PPC machine and it is not
very practical for me to use LT Spice (even if I sometimes need
Windows on my Intel-based laptop to use Altium Designer at my work). I
believe who is using Linux would experience similar problems. But the
point is not entirely that. Other people will appreciate that FidoCadJ
is open source and that the format is well documented. On another
point of view, we are on Usenet now, but I have seen the FidoCadJ
format handled on some forums thanks to FidoReadPHP and I was the
first to be surprised by the success it had.

BTW, I still have some step recovery diodes you sent to me a few years
ago. I played with them in a sub-nanosecond rise time pulse generator
and they were very useful. Thanks again for your help!


Best regards,

Davide

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2011 11:33:11 -0800 (PST), Darwin <davbucci@tiscali.it>
wrote:

On 5 Feb, 20:01, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Most of us use LT Spice, and just post the ascii schematic file here.
Then people can not only see it, they can play with the simulation.

Dear John,
I know LT Spice (and I noticed it was used here and in
sci.electronics.design): it is a wonderful tool, but it has an
entirely different goal than FidoCadJ's. The latter for example does
not simulate circuits and is more a quite simple 2D vector graphic
tool.
One of the problems I have is that I can not see the circuit you
posted since I am using MacOSX on an old PPC machine and it is not
very practical for me to use LT Spice (even if I sometimes need
Windows on my Intel-based laptop to use Altium Designer at my work). I
believe who is using Linux would experience similar problems. But the
point is not entirely that. Other people will appreciate that FidoCadJ
is open source and that the format is well documented. On another
point of view, we are on Usenet now, but I have seen the FidoCadJ
format handled on some forums thanks to FidoReadPHP and I was the
first to be surprised by the success it had.

Unfortunately, engineers are usually forced to run Windows. Too many
tools require it.

I'd love to have a really good drawing program, for block diagrams and
timing diagrams and general line work. I've been using Visio, which
works but is klunky. I've never got around to learning Autocad.

BTW, I still have some step recovery diodes you sent to me a few years
ago. I played with them in a sub-nanosecond rise time pulse generator
and they were very useful. Thanks again for your help!

SRDs are great fun, but hard to get. There are only two or three that
are stocked parts, available through distribution, namely the MAcom
SOT23's, which are a bit slow. Seems like everybody else just stocks
wafers and packages parts to order, if you beg and plead enough.

Some other parts are accidental SRDs, like varicap diodes maybe. That
would be cool to experiment with some day.

John

 

[Darwin]

On 5 Feb, 22:25, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Unfortunately, engineers are usually forced to run Windows. Too many
tools require it.

That is unfortunately true! It must be said that FidoCadJ is probably
less useful for an engineer than to an hobbyist, since an engineer has
much more powerful tools for such kind of things. Having said that, I
know some engineers who appreciate FidoCadJ too

I'd love to have a really good drawing program, for block diagrams and
timing diagrams and general line work. I've been using Visio, which
works but is klunky. I've never got around to learning Autocad.

Probably, FidoCadJ is not a good tool for such kind of things, even if
for some quick sketches it may still be useful. For a lot of time, I
used Corel Draw (on Windows), then I switched to Open Office Draw, but
I find it rather klunky. I should give a try to Inkscape a day or
another.
FidoCadJ is quite good for preparing schematics meant to be included
in documents (CADs such Altium Designer are just horrible for that). I
use quite often LaTeX and FidoCadJ drawings can be exported and
included via the PGF graphic system. I find it quite satisfying from a
typographical point of view. With a WYSIWYG editor like Word, results
are less pleasing since you must first export as a PNG image and then
include it, but it is still way better than other systems.

SRDs are great fun, but hard to get. There are only two or three that
are stocked parts, available through distribution, namely the MAcom
SOT23's, which are a bit slow.

I recall that I obtained a few samples from Aeroflex-Metelics and I
played with their MMD840 obtaining some 100 ps rise time 10%-90%. It
was measured with a 40 GHz sampling oscilloscope, so the measure was a
little bit affected by the jitter of the trigger generator.

Some other parts are accidental SRDs, like varicap diodes maybe. That
would be cool to experiment with some day.

I have heard that, but I recall that the results I got with some
varicap diodes I had in my junk box were not very encouraging.
I remember also I was trying some bipolar transistors in their
avalanche region, somewhat inspired by a Jim Williams' application
note. I did not measured precisely the rise time I got (I believe some
1 ns), but I was intrigued by the non conventional use of very common
devices.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 5 Feb 2011 11:33:11 -0800 (PST), Darwin<davbucci@tiscali.it
wrote:

On 5 Feb, 20:01, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Most of us use LT Spice, and just post the ascii schematic file here.
Then people can not only see it, they can play with the simulation.

Dear John,
I know LT Spice (and I noticed it was used here and in
sci.electronics.design): it is a wonderful tool, but it has an
entirely different goal than FidoCadJ's. The latter for example does
not simulate circuits and is more a quite simple 2D vector graphic
tool.
One of the problems I have is that I can not see the circuit you
posted since I am using MacOSX on an old PPC machine and it is not
very practical for me to use LT Spice (even if I sometimes need
Windows on my Intel-based laptop to use Altium Designer at my work). I
believe who is using Linux would experience similar problems. But the
point is not entirely that. Other people will appreciate that FidoCadJ
is open source and that the format is well documented. On another
point of view, we are on Usenet now, but I have seen the FidoCadJ
format handled on some forums thanks to FidoReadPHP and I was the
first to be surprised by the success it had.

Unfortunately, engineers are usually forced to run Windows. Too many
tools require it.

I'd love to have a really good drawing program, for block diagrams and
timing diagrams and general line work. I've been using Visio, which
works but is klunky. I've never got around to learning Autocad.


BTW, I still have some step recovery diodes you sent to me a few years
ago. I played with them in a sub-nanosecond rise time pulse generator
and they were very useful. Thanks again for your help!

SRDs are great fun, but hard to get. There are only two or three that
are stocked parts, available through distribution, namely the MAcom
SOT23's, which are a bit slow. Seems like everybody else just stocks
wafers and packages parts to order, if you beg and plead enough.

Some other parts are accidental SRDs, like varicap diodes maybe. That
would be cool to experiment with some day.

John

Freelance 4.0 for DOS. Best technical cartoon-drawing program ever
made. Runs well under emulation too.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Ron M.]

On Feb 5, 5:23 pm, Darwin <davbu...@tiscali.it> wrote:

On 5 Feb, 22:25, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
Unfortunately, engineers are usually forced to run Windows. Too many
tools require it.

That is unfortunately true! It must be said that FidoCadJ is probably
less useful for an engineer than to an hobbyist, since an engineer has
much more powerful tools for such kind of things. Having said that, I
know some engineers who appreciate FidoCadJ too

I'd love to have a really good drawing program, for block diagrams and
timing diagrams and general line work. I've been using Visio, which
works but is klunky. I've never got around to learning Autocad.

Probably, FidoCadJ is not a good tool for such kind of things, even if
for some quick sketches it may still be useful. For a lot of time, I
used Corel Draw (on Windows), then I switched to Open Office Draw, but
I find it rather klunky. I should give a try to Inkscape a day or
another.
FidoCadJ is quite good for preparing schematics meant to be included
in documents (CADs such Altium Designer are just horrible for that). I
use quite often LaTeX and FidoCadJ drawings can be exported and
included via the PGF graphic system. I find it quite satisfying from a
typographical point of view. With a WYSIWYG editor like Word, results
are less pleasing since you must first export as a PNG image and then
include it, but it is still way better than other systems.

SRDs are great fun, but hard to get. There are only two or three that
are stocked parts, available through distribution, namely the MAcom
SOT23's, which are a bit slow.

I recall that I obtained a few samples from Aeroflex-Metelics and I
played with their MMD840 obtaining some 100 ps rise time 10%-90%. It
was measured with a 40 GHz sampling oscilloscope, so the measure was a
little bit affected by the jitter of the trigger generator.

Some other parts are accidental SRDs, like varicap diodes maybe. That
would be cool to experiment with some day.

I have heard that, but I recall that the results I got with some
varicap diodes I had in my junk box were not very encouraging.
I remember also I was trying some bipolar transistors in their
avalanche region, somewhat inspired by a Jim Williams' application
note. I did not measured precisely the rise time I got (I believe some
1 ns), but I was intrigued by the non conventional use of very common
devices.

WOW. You guys are way advanced. I still use Paint to draw schems.
Course you have to create the components.......

 

[Darwin]

On 10 fév, 01:23, "Ron M." <strmbr...@hotmail.com> wrote:

WOW. You guys are way advanced. I still use Paint to draw schems.
Course you have to create the components.......

The problem is that Paint is a bitmap based drawing program. This will
do only for tracing some low resolution schematics and sketches.
Bitmap is OK for retouching photos (well, not with Paint, I guess),
but it is not very well suit for schematics. From a typographical
point of view, it is way better to use some vector-based drawing
program, at least if possible.

 

[Bob Masta]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 03:29:37 -0800 (PST), Darwin
<davbucci@tiscali.it> wrote:

On 10 f=E9v, 01:23, "Ron M." <strmbr...@hotmail.com> wrote:

WOW. You guys are way advanced. I still use Paint to draw schems.
Course you have to create the components.......

The problem is that Paint is a bitmap based drawing program. This will
do only for tracing some low resolution schematics and sketches.
Bitmap is OK for retouching photos (well, not with Paint, I guess),
but it is not very well suit for schematics. From a typographical
point of view, it is way better to use some vector-based drawing
program, at least if possible.

Paint can be pretty effective for the occasional schematic,
if you already have the general circuit drawn (on scratch
paper, say) and just want to create a decent drawing for
publication. The trick is to confine yourself to a single
resolution/scale and maintain a "drawing" of individual
components: resistor, capacitor, PNP, NPN, diode, op-amp,
etc. Then you keep a copy of this drawing open next to the
one you are working on. When you want to add a component
you select it in the component drawing, and copy-paste it to
the target. You can rotate or flip it at that time.
Connect as needed with the line-drawing tool, using SHIFT to
maintain horizontal and vertical lines.

One advantage of Paint is that you can do pretty much
anything you want, without learning a suite of arcane
methods for a special-purpose CAD drawing tool. Some of the
vector-based CAD tools have pretty crude-looking fonts, for
example.

Plus, many folks are already familiar with how to get around
in Paint, which counts for a lot if you are only doing an
occasional drawing.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v6.00
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
Frequency Counter, FREE Signal Generator
Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI
Science with your sound card!

 

[Winston]

Using Paint to draw schematics is like transporting lumber
using only a bicycle. It's a great stunt and a tremendous
workout but it is not very effective or fun.

In our world, a flatbed truck costs as much to purchase
and run as does a bicycle, is much faster and easier to
drive and gets the job done quickly, correctly and *much*
more pleasantly.

My advice:
Download LTSpice for free.
http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/ltspice.jsp
Draw effortlessly.
Share ideas effectively.
Simulate.
Export netlists for PCB creation.
Enjoy life and leave the sweating to the unenlightened.



--Winston

 

[Rich Grise]

Winston wrote:

In our world, a flatbed truck costs as much to purchase
and run as does a bicycle, is much faster and easier to
drive and gets the job done quickly, correctly and *much*
more pleasantly.

On which planet can you buy a flatbed truck for fifty bucks?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Darwin wrote:

Paint can be pretty effective for the occasional schematic,
if you already have the general circuit drawn (on scratch
paper, say) and just want to create a decent drawing for
publication.

If you want to publish anything decent, you may work at least at a
quite high resolution in dpi or instead the result would be not very
professional. The result may be OK for a webpage, but probably not for
printing.

[cut]
One advantage of Paint is that you can do pretty much
anything you want, without learning a suite of arcane
methods for a special-purpose CAD drawing tool. Some of the
vector-based CAD tools have pretty crude-looking fonts, for
example.

You may defintely give a try to FidoCadJ instead of Paint. I am
involved in the development, so I can not be completely objective, but
I heard a lot of people is perfectly happy with it: no arcane methods
at all, just very simple drawing primitives and a collection of
symbols which can be customized. If you want to retouch your drawings,
you may export them in EPS, PDF or SVG and you still have a vector-
based representation. Or else, you may export them in PNG or JPEG to
obtain a bitmap version, which you may edit in Paint
If I am dubious FidoCadJ would represent a valid alternative for
someone already using LT Spice, I am quite sure it is much better than
Paint even for casual use if you seek a software to draw very quickly
an electronic schematic or a simple PCB.

I've used Paint to put text annotation on bitmaps, but rarely for
anything else.

You really need vector graphics for publication. Pictures inevitably
get resized to fit the page layout; vector files look fine at any
magnification, bitmaps don't. And LTSpice schematics aren't that great
looking when printed.

It doesn't have to be fancy stuff--I use Freelance 4.0 for DOS, as I
said already, for all my line drawing needs, and have for 20 years. It
has zilch support for modern printers, but the old printer drivers
produce excellent PostScript, which is easy to convert to anything.
Everything I've published since about 1990 has been done with it. There
are other simple drawing packages available that produce vector output.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Darwin]

Paint can be pretty effective for the occasional schematic,
if you already have the general circuit drawn (on scratch
paper, say) and just want to create a decent drawing for
publication.

If you want to publish anything decent, you may work at least at a
quite high resolution in dpi or instead the result would be not very
professional. The result may be OK for a webpage, but probably not for
printing.

One advantage of Paint is that you can do pretty much
anything you want, without learning a suite of arcane
methods for a special-purpose CAD drawing tool.  Some of the
vector-based CAD tools have pretty crude-looking fonts, for
example.

You may defintely give a try to FidoCadJ instead of Paint. I am
involved in the development, so I can not be completely objective, but
I heard a lot of people is perfectly happy with it: no arcane methods
at all, just very simple drawing primitives and a collection of
symbols which can be customized. If you want to retouch your drawings,
you may export them in EPS, PDF or SVG and you still have a vector-
based representation. Or else, you may export them in PNG or JPEG to
obtain a bitmap version, which you may edit in Paint
If I am dubious FidoCadJ would represent a valid alternative for
someone already using LT Spice, I am quite sure it is much better than
Paint even for casual use if you seek a software to draw very quickly
an electronic schematic or a simple PCB.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:39:00 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Darwin wrote:

Paint can be pretty effective for the occasional schematic,
if you already have the general circuit drawn (on scratch
paper, say) and just want to create a decent drawing for
publication.

If you want to publish anything decent, you may work at least at a
quite high resolution in dpi or instead the result would be not very
professional. The result may be OK for a webpage, but probably not for
printing.

[cut]
One advantage of Paint is that you can do pretty much
anything you want, without learning a suite of arcane
methods for a special-purpose CAD drawing tool. Some of the
vector-based CAD tools have pretty crude-looking fonts, for
example.

You may defintely give a try to FidoCadJ instead of Paint. I am
involved in the development, so I can not be completely objective, but
I heard a lot of people is perfectly happy with it: no arcane methods
at all, just very simple drawing primitives and a collection of
symbols which can be customized. If you want to retouch your drawings,
you may export them in EPS, PDF or SVG and you still have a vector-
based representation. Or else, you may export them in PNG or JPEG to
obtain a bitmap version, which you may edit in Paint
If I am dubious FidoCadJ would represent a valid alternative for
someone already using LT Spice, I am quite sure it is much better than
Paint even for casual use if you seek a software to draw very quickly
an electronic schematic or a simple PCB.

I've used Paint to put text annotation on bitmaps, but rarely for
anything else.

I use paint fairly often to resize bitmaps. It's a lot faster and easier than
firing up GIMP.

 

[Winston]

Rich Grise wrote:

Winston wrote:


In our world, a flatbed truck costs as much to purchase
and run as does a bicycle, is much faster and easier to
drive and gets the job done quickly, correctly and *much*
more pleasantly.

On which planet can you buy a flatbed truck for fifty bucks?

It's a pair of 'similes' Rich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simile

I was equating the bicycle to MSPaint and the flatbed truck to
LTSpice.

Either program costs about nothing, but LTSpice is so much
better suited to the purpose of electronic development and
idea sharing that it is sad to contemplate someone struggling
with MSPaint for those purposes.

Just like attempting to haul lumber on a bicycle.
One can do it but one would be wasting one's valuable time.

--Winston