Good Tools for Drawing Schematics

Question

I was going to add a bit of information to my post on a previous day using schematics and some instructions. What programs are being employed for this purpose.

I mostly want to see what others are using and that I can easily use to give descriptive schematics.

In a perfect world, and I know this is a case of me wishing, it would be:

1. Free.
2. Extremely easy to draw schematics in.
3. Allows simple production of waveforms for the inputs/outputs.

Would enjoy any pointers people could toss me.

Answer 1

And now you can do that inside a reasonably modern browser with CircuitLab.

The community version, which is free, is somewhat limited on its library of components, but the simulator running in the browser is a testament to the power of current Javascript engines.

This is an example screenshot of the Circuitlab design environment:

This is an example screenshot of the Circuitlab simulation environment:

Answer 2

Surprised no one mentioned KiCAD. It doesn't do SPICE simulations, but handles pretty much everything else. You might be able to use other SPICE tools with it's netlist, but I haven't tried.

Answer 3

gschem of geda makes nice schematics, with real fonts.

1. It's free software (GPL license).

2. It's as easy as it gets. All the schematic capture programs need some learning.

3. I've not tried that, but there ought to be something in the gEDA suite.

Answer 4

My favorite schematic capture tool is a pencil on green-gridded engineering paper, and a camera.

Once I have the schematic how I like it, it goes into gschem.

But for just sketching up circuits, paper is the way to go.

Answer 5

Another option is KTechlab. I suspect most people have never heard of it, but it's a free electronics simulation program that lets you do simple circuits. Schematics are easy to draw and it produces waveforms easily. I find it more intuitive and quick than a SPICE simulator, but of course it's not as powerful. It's more a system for thinking about idealized circuits, while SPICE is more a system for modeling real-life circuits, along with all their flaws and frailties. It's Linux-only, but you can run it in Virtualbox or something.

Answer 6

For more limited media there's AACircuit http://www.tech-chat.de/aacircuit.html

                        ___
                   .---|___|-----.
                   |             |
                   |             |
             ___   |  |\|        |
           -|___|-----|-\        |
                      |  >-------'
                   .--|+/
                   |  |/|
                   |    |
                  ===  ===
                  GND  GND

(created by AACircuit v1.28.6 beta 04/19/05 www.tech-chat.de)

Answer 7

This Java circuit simulator is pretty easy to draw schematics in, and it has a way to export them as plain text:

$ 1 5.0E-6 0.9891409633455756 46 5.0 50
I 240 256 304 256 0 0.5
I 352 256 416 256 0 0.5
w 416 256 416 192 0
w 240 192 240 256 0
r 320 272 320 336 0 220000.0
c 320 352 320 400 0 4.7000000000000004E-8 1.4535908873993098
g 320 416 320 432 0
s 224 384 224 320 0 1 true
w 240 256 224 256 0
w 224 256 224 320 0
w 272 384 224 384 0
w 320 352 320 336 0
w 320 400 320 416 0
w 272 384 272 352 0
w 272 352 320 352 0
w 304 256 320 272 0
w 352 256 320 272 0
r 240 192 416 192 0 5000.0
o 1 64 0 35 5.0 0.0015625 0 -1

The above code will produce this circuit:

Maybe there's a way to integrate it into a site, so that users can draw a circuit, paste the above code into the answer box, surround it with special tags, and it will create a pop-up applet?

Even better, a schematic image could be generated from the code, which, when clicked on, opens a simulation applet of that schematic.

Maybe talk to the author about something like this? He has the applet zipped up for you to use on your own computer, but I don't know about distributing it on other websites.

Update: I talked to the author, and he implemented URL data within hours of me proposing it. There is now an "Export Link" menu option that generates links like this, without requiring a directory or hashtable on the server or anything. You can use the same URL to display the same circuit while using the java file on your own computer:

This should display the above circuit

And he pointed out the licensing agreement, which I think permits us to modify it and use it on here to embed schematics, like this.

You have permission to modify the applets and/or copy the applets onto your own web site as long as you credit me (Paul Falstad) and provide a link to my page

This 4000 character URL should show a 7-segment decoder

Answer 8

I personally use Eagle but the learning curve is somewhat high. You might want to check out Fritzing, it's open source and built with the beginner in mind.

Answer 9

Probably not the best solution, but most of time I use Eagle to make schematics. Now, that doesn't really cover points 2 and 3 of your requirements, but it's what I use. Additionally I frequently use OrCad PSPICE.

I would, however, strongly recommend gEDA http://www.gpleda.org/

Answer 10

Usually whenever I'm doing this, I'd just plop out a circuit in SPICE and then print to a PDF. Not the most elegant solution, but not the most difficult either.

LTSpice is free and pretty great. Also, I hear they keep waveforms inside some of those circle and triangle things on the schematics, just need to push some buttons to let them out :-)

Is this what you meant? Or did you mean something that is modifiable like a GoogleDocs for schematics? That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

Answer 11

Try TinyCAD: it's open-source. For schematic capture (this doesn't do simulation, although you can export netlists to PSPICE).

(disclosure of bias: I work with the project maintainer)

Answer 12

There's also this web-based thing, meant to have screenshots taken of it:

http://www.qsl.net/wd9eyb/klunky/framed.html

But it could be modified to generate code that could be copied and pasted into this site? Something that generates a single image would be preferable, of course.

There's a real need for a quick web-based schematic drawing tool, not just here, but everywhere. I would code it if I knew how, but my skills are weak. Could we somehow commission someone at Stack Overflow to write something in exchange for rep? In exchange for money? Kickstarter? A simple javascript editor could allow for blocks to be put next to each other, like this Klunky editor, then it could generate a URL with a bunch of gibberish at the end, which then causes the server to generate a single PNG, for instance. The image could be linked directly from forums or copied to imgur automatically by the Stackexchange software. The URL of the image could be plugged back into the editor to allow modifications, etc.

The text labels in Klunky could use some work, too.

Or if stackexchange accepted data: URLs, it could generate an image that could be copied and pasted into the URL box without requiring a server at all. :)

Or SVG. Or Flash. Or something. But I think a simple block-based editor would be sufficient for the vast majority of online schematic examples, rather than a full-fledged schematic capture program that allows you to draw wires manually and move components one pixel at a time and change all their parameters.

Here's an HTML 5 image editor that generates images as data: URLs, for instance:

http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/

http://softwareas.com/ajaxjavascript-8-ways-to-create-graphics-on-the-fly

data urls can be converted into tinyurls!

http://preview.tinyurl.com/smallreddot

Answer 13

Personally I don't like the traditional electronics schematics, because I'm normally making stuff for non engineers. So I use Photographs and a regular drawing program to label the components. Thought it may be of interest to people checking out this thread

I like this method as it's easy to understand and quick to draw up. (obviously this picture comes with a key describing each label)

Answer 14

The same question came up on Wikipedia.

The top recommendation there seems to be Inkscape + a nice collection of public-domain electrical symbols you can download from Wikipedia.

I find that a little surprising, because Inkscape is a general-purpose graphics editor which knows nothing about diagrams or electronics.

Answer 15

Check out this javascript program on google code. It's not ready to be used yet but it's getting close. It doesn't work in IE and it has some glitches. I wouldn't embed it in a web page yet, but you can use it separately. I'm not much of a javascript programmer but with some help we can create our own editor. It won't create waveforms though. It would be awesome if you could somehow include spice models in the xml .I think that would be a little too much for javascript though. this is just for quick sketches.

http://code.google.com/p/webtronics/

Answer 16

XCircuit is designed for publication-quality diagrams. It outputs PostScript. I remember finding the UI awkward and the output a little weird, myself, but it's maybe improved since I last used it, and it's certainly better quality than a screenshot of a schematic capture program.

You can find some examples of its output on Wikimedia Commons.

Answer 17

TeX can be used to generate publication-quality schematics. Here are some examples.

CircuiTikz is a set of LaTeX macros designed to make it easy to draw electrical networks in scientific publications. It provides a convenient syntax based on to-paths to place the various components.

Answer 18

How about a Quite Universial Circuit Simulator (qucs)?

• http://qucs.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

(But I'm not sure if it is ready for prime time yet, but so far so good)

Answer 19

I use DipTrace and I'm very satisfied. It's not free, but is quite inexpensive. I tried Eagle, which seems to be the most widely used, but was horrified about its unfriendliness. To me, it's not only a thing about learning curve, but simply making things harder to do than it should be. Made me remember a traumatic experience with AutoCAD during the late 80s. I tried many other low-cost and free alternatives, but they either were also a bad-UI, unstable, or had a poor component library. The only under-100s package that worked well was DipTrace. Its weakness is that the PCB router is not very efficient (it was unable to route some boards that I was able to route manually without much effort), in particular when you have few layers, but to my use this was a minor limitation in comparison.

Answer 20

I use gEDA as well. gschem for schematics and PCB for printed circuit board layout. As an open source example I did a remix of the ladyada Drawdio circuit. The files and documentation are at http://tinyurl.com/bq8pq4

My PCB footprint library and various EDA automation scripts are at http://www.luciani.org

Answer 21

Could generate them in PostScript in conjunction with TeX?

pst-circ is a PSTricks package to draw electric and electronic circuits. It can be used either with TeX or LaTeX.

Answer 22

Just learned (as of March 2012) of a new web-based schematic drawing tool called "Scheme-It" that uses HTML5 to enable drawing of schematics online, and it also allows export to PNG & PDF formats.

Apparently it's supported by Digi-Key, I'm sure it's intended to drive you to buy components from them but there is no registration or anything required, no lock-in, and it seems to be very usable. Within 60 seconds of visiting the site I'd dragged some components for a basic circuit & exported it as a PNG.

No simulation capabilities though -- I use LTSPICE for that, others have already covered LTSPICE in other answers.

Answer 23

http://www.designspark.com/pcb

I recently started to use it and have found that it works ok for whipping up quick circuits etc.

It's by RS Components and does require registration at their website, however the product appears to be free.

It will handle schematics as well as PCB and it is supposed to do Gerber files as well. Note I am not affiliated with RS Components in anyway.

Answer 24

If you just want to draw schematics not for PCB . you can try DrawSCH,it can draw schematics online for free. try it http://www.dz863.com/

Answer 25

MetaPost has a library MakeCirc for making publication-style schematics. Here is the manual.

Answer 26

You should check out Upverter.com. They dont do simulation yet, but can do everything else you're looking for.

Answer 27

I use DipTrace http://www.diptrace.com/ it has a schematic tool, schematic capture, PCB layout, back propagation, auto routing and most important of all a very good library.

Designing custom libraries are as easy as the schematic tool. The learning curve is smooth and one can pick up the essentials in about an hour or two.

Answer 28

There another interesting one - www.DoCircuits.com - real like schematics can be captured and shared.

Answer 29

I use FastStone capture to post screen shots.

Here are the steps:

1. ctrl-printscreen
2. Drag the area I want to capture
3. It pops up the image
4. I click on ftp. it knows my domain and where to put it. It makes up a name based on the date. It copies the url to the clipboard
5. I ctrl-v the url to the insert picture icon

That's it. You still have to have a schematic in your computer but this addresses a large part of your question.

Here's an example: