GEDA

Last updated
gEDA
Original author(s) Ales Hvezda et al.
Initial releaseApril 1, 1998;24 years ago (1998-04-01)
Stable release
1.10.2 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 22 December 2020;23 months ago (22 December 2020)
Preview release
1.9.2 [2]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 30 September 2015;7 years ago (30 September 2015)
Repository
Operating system Linux, Unix-like, Mac OS X , Microsoft Windows (experimental)
Type Electronic design automation
License GPL-2.0-or-later [3]
Website www.geda-project.org
Gschem and gerbv showing a simple connector design under creation using components from the gEDA Suite. Gschem and gerbv.jpg
Gschem and gerbv showing a simple connector design under creation using components from the gEDA Suite.
Screenshot showing the layout editor PCB in action. Screenshot strom redesign.png
Screenshot showing the layout editor PCB in action.

The term gEDA refers to two things:

  1. A set of software applications (CAD tools) used for electronic design released under the GPL. As such, gEDA is an ECAD (electronic CAD) or EDA (electronic design automation) application suite. gEDA is mostly oriented towards printed circuit board design (as opposed to integrated circuit design). The gEDA applications are often referred to collectively as "the gEDA Suite".
  2. The collaboration of free software/open-source developers who work to develop and maintain the gEDA toolkit. The developers communicate via gEDA mailing lists, and have participated in the annual "Google Summer of Code" event as a single project. This collaboration is often referred to as "the gEDA Project".

The word "gEDA" is a conjunction of "GPL" and "EDA". The names of some of the individual tools in the gEDA Suite are prefixed with the letter "g" to emphasize that they are released under the GNU General Public License.

Contents

History

The gEDA project was started by Ales Hvezda in an effort to remedy the lack of free software EDA tools for Linux/UNIX. [4] The first software was released on 1 April 1998, and included a schematic capture program and a netlister. [5] At that time, the gEDA Project website and mailing lists were also set up.

Originally, the project planned to also write a PCB layout program. However, an existing open-source layout program, "PCB", was soon discovered by the project. Thereafter, the ability to target netlists to PCB was quickly built into the gEDA Project's netlister, and plans to write a new layout program from scratch were scrapped. Meanwhile, developers working on PCB became affiliates of the gEDA Project.

Other open-source EDA programs were created at about the same time. The authors of those programs became affiliated with the gEDA website and mailing lists, and the collaborative gEDA Project was born.

At present, the gEDA Project remains a federation of software tools developed by different (but sometimes overlapping) programmers. The thread which holds the project together is the shared vision of creating a powerful, community-based, open-source EDA toolkit.

pcb-rnd was forked from gEDA/PCB in 2013.

Lepton EDA was forked from the gEDA/gaf suite in late 2016.

Detailed description

Loosely speaking, the term "gEDA Suite" refers to all free software projects and applications that have associated themselves with the gEDA Project via the geda-dev/geda-user mailing lists. These include:

Within the gEDA Suite, gEDA/gaf ("gaf" stands for "gschem and friends") is the smaller subset of tools grouped together under the gEDA name and maintained directly by the gEDA project's founders. GEDA/gaf includes:

Platforms

Linux

Because one of the gEDA Project's longstanding goals is to provide a suite of EDA applications for Linux, all applications in the gEDA Suite compile and run on Linux. Besides building the programs from source, binary executables for all programs in the gEDA Suite are available from popular package archives; the programs may be installed on many common Linux distributions using package management tools such as apt or dnf.

Unix

All gEDA applications will also compile and run on other Unix-like operating systems, such as OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD. Some of these distributions also support installation of pre-packaged binaries using package management utilities.

Mac OS X

Most gEDA applications also install and run successfully on Mac OS X, typically using the Fink package manager and Macports. Since few commercial EDA tools run on the Mac, this feature has made gEDA a popular electronic design package amongst Mac users.

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows support is currently not a primary project goal. Nonetheless, some programs in the gEDA Suite have built-in hooks for Windows support, and those programs will build and run under Windows. However, binary executables for most of the gEDA Suite are not distributed by the gEDA Project.

Community

An important feature of the gEDA project is the strong user community it has created. [6] The gEDA mailing lists have several hundred subscribers, and many subscribers are electronics experts. Thus, the gEDA mailing lists have become a source not only for information related to the gEDA applications, but also for exchange of general electronic design information.

As a consequence of the project's openness, schematic symbols, footprints, and utility scripts are freely created and shared amongst the members of the gEDA community at a spin-off website, www.gedasymbols.org.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">TARGET (CAD software)</span>

TARGET 3001! is a CAD computer program for EDA and PCB design, developed by Ing.-Büro Friedrich in Germany. It supports the design of electronic schematics, PCBs, and device front panels. It runs under Windows and is available in English, German and French.

gtkmm is the official C++ interface for the popular GUI library GTK. gtkmm is free software distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OrCAD</span> Electronic design automation software

OrCAD Systems Corporation was a software company that made OrCAD, a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation (EDA). The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and electronic technicians to create electronic schematics, perform mixed-signal simulation and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards (PCBs). OrCAD was taken over by Cadence Design Systems in 1999 and was integrated with Cadence Allegro since 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XCircuit</span> Electrical circuit design software

XCircuit is a Unix/X11 and Windows program for drawing publication-quality electrical circuit schematic diagrams and related figures and the production of circuit netlists through schematic capture. XCircuit regards circuits as inherently hierarchical and writes both PostScript output and hierarchical SPICE netlists. Circuit components are saved in and retrieved from libraries which are fully editable. XCircuit does not separate artistic expression from circuit drawing; it maintains flexibility in style without compromising the power of schematic capture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ngspice</span> Analog circuit simulator software

Ngspice is an open-source mixed-level/mixed-signal electronic circuit simulator. It is a successor of the latest stable release of Berkeley SPICE, version 3f.5, which was released in 1993. A small group of maintainers and the user community contribute to the ngspice project by providing new features, enhancements and bug fixes.

The Layout Versus Schematic (LVS) is the class of electronic design automation (EDA) verification software that determines whether a particular integrated circuit layout corresponds to the original schematic or circuit diagram of the design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oregano (software)</span> Electronic circuit design software

Oregano is a graphical software application for schematic capture and simulation of electrical circuits. The actual simulation is performed by the SPICE, Ngspice or Gnucap engines. It is similar to gEDA and KTechlab. It makes use of GNOME technology and is meant to run on free Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD et al.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quite Universal Circuit Simulator</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">NI Multisim</span> Electronic Software

NI Multisim is an electronic schematic capture and simulation program which is part of a suite of circuit design programs, along with NI Ultiboard. Multisim is one of the few circuit design programs to employ the original Berkeley SPICE based software simulation. Multisim was originally created by a company named Electronics Workbench Group, which is now a division of National Instruments. Multisim includes microcontroller simulation, as well as integrated import and export features to the printed circuit board layout software in the suite, NI Ultiboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KiCad</span> Free software suite for electronic design automation

KiCad is a free software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware. It features an integrated environment for schematic capture, PCB layout, manufacturing file viewing, SPICE simulation, and engineering calculation. Tools exist within the package to create bill of materials, artwork, Gerber files, and 3D models of the PCB and its components.

This page is a comparison of electronic design automation (EDA) software which is used today to design the near totality of electronic devices. Modern electronic devices are too complex to be designed without the help of a computer. Electronic devices may consist of integrated circuits (ICs), printed circuit boards (PCBs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) or a combination of them. Integrated circuits may consist of a combination of digital and analog circuits. These circuits can contain a combination of transistors, resistors, capacitors or specialized components such as analog neural networks, antennas or fuses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PCB (software)</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">DesignSpark PCB</span>

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LTspice is a SPICE-based analog electronic circuit simulator computer software, produced by semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices. It is the most widely distributed and used SPICE software in the industry. Though it is freeware, LTspice is not artificially restricted to limit its capabilities. It ships with a library of SPICE models from Analog Devices, Linear Technology, Maxim Integrated, and third-party sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulsonix</span>

Pulsonix is an electronic design automation (EDA) software suite for schematic capture and PCB design. It is produced by WestDev, which is headquartered in Gloucestershire, England, with additional sales and distribution offices overseas. It was first released in 2001, and runs on Windows.

CircuitMaker is electronic design automation software for printed circuit board designs targeted at the hobby, hacker, and maker community. CircuitMaker is available as freeware, and the hardware designed with it may be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes without limitations. It is currently available publicly as version 2.0 by Altium Limited, with the first non-beta release on January 17, 2016.

EasyEDA is a web-based EDA tool suite that enables hardware engineers to design, simulate, share - publicly and privately - and discuss schematics, simulations and printed circuit boards. Other features include the creation of a bill of materials, Gerber files and pick and place files and documentary outputs in PDF, PNG and SVG formats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proteus Design Suite</span> Electronic design automation software

The Proteus Design Suite is a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation. The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and technicians to create schematics and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards.

References

  1. http://ftp.geda-project.org/geda-gaf/stable/v1.10/1.10.2/.
  2. http://git.geda-project.org/geda-gaf/tag/?id=1.9.2-20150930; retrieved: 19 January 2018.
  3. "gEDA Licensing".
  4. Goering, Richard (2004-12-13). "Do-it-yourselfer's EDA project wins open-source fans". EE Times. Archived from the original on 2012-07-28. Retrieved 2008-11-25.
  5. Goering, Richard (1998-11-25). "Open-source movements get behind GNU EDA tools". EE Times. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
  6. Anderson, Tom (2008). "Creating Open Source Electronic Hardware with Open Source Software". O'Reilly OSCON Open Source Convention. Retrieved 2008-11-25.