Joel said:
One significant feature that Pulsonix/EasyPC lack is the ability to
automatically have nets connect by copying/pasting (or duplicating) a bunch of
components and their associated nets "on top of " some other nets. I was
really surprised to find this -- ORCAD, PCAD, and most other packages I've
tried in the past 5 years all do this! It has been mentioned to me that
allowing this behavior is potentially "risky," so I can see some checkbox for
whether or not it should be allowed, but for someone used to working in this
style of design entry it's a real producitivity killer.
Similarly, drawing a line past a bunch of pins (say all your power pins
sticking out of the side of a larger symbol) doesn't connect the net to those
pins -- something that can make what could be a "two click" operations a
"twenty click" operation if you have 10 pins you wanted connected to the same
net. (Although, in all fairness, just like other programs you can pre-assign
a net to a bunch of pins and not show them on the schematic, but personally
I've preferred to show all power pins ever since the likelihood that
"diagonally opposite pins = +5V and Gnd" went the way of the dodo about a
decade ago. Hiding lots of information like power pins numbers certainly
makes the schematic look a little nicer, but for me this benefit is outweighed
by the utility of being able to know, from a paper schematic, where one ought
to find power -- and what the voltage should be -- during troubleshooting.)
In general, Pulsonix/EasyPC are well-written programs that are fast and
'clean,' -- they're still lacking some of the features that the big boys have,
but I haven't regretted spending the money on Pulsonix yet.
---Joel
I really appreciate the mention of copying groups; i have one very
busy board with 40 items that interconnect to each other exactly the
same way.
So i layout four, and "step and repeat" to get 8, then dup the set
for 16 etc until have 32 then dup a group of 8 for that total of 40.
So i know exactly what you mean.
The bad thing was that Ivex winBoard would not allow any SM on the
back side - otherwise i could theoretically have dupped the 40 and
flipped for the back side.
Being an electronic tech for over 40 years, i agree that
documentation should be complete - even if the schematic looks "messy".
One never knows when troubleshooting is needed, and pin functions
have always been vital since the days of 4-pin, 5-pin, etc tubes and
with plate and grid caps.
The added info (eg: Tektronix) of voltages and waveforms at notable
or useful test points adds to the useability of a schematic for the test
tech.