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Paul Burke
Guest
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 Posted:
Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Early CAD Panning and Zooming? |
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matt wrote:
| Quote: | I used an ancient version of Racal-Redac in 1982 that was panning and
zooming . Ran on an equally ancient IBM XT .
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I got given a version of that free at a show in about 1987/8. Never did
use it, though, sadly. The operation manual seemed to have been written
by an army drill sergeant.
Paul Burke
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Greg
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Jan 28, 2005 11:49 pm Post subject:
Re: Early CAD Panning and Zooming? |
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All of this is very helpful.
If any of you have an old manual or other documents, I would gladly
compensate you for shipping and digging it out of the garage. Send me
an email if you think you might have anything like that from before
1984.
Thank you,
Greg |
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Joerg
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 29, 2005 1:22 am Post subject:
Re: Early CAD Panning and Zooming? |
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Hello John,
| Quote: | Joerg ... One of the big big annoyances I had with Eagle was that the
component-power-pins were not accessible. The proggers seemed to assume that
all designers were locked in a 1970's timewarp and designed wholly using 5V
rails. This meant ugly dismantling (invoking?) of every component. I packed
it in because of this and their libraries abortion.
You've given Eagle a thumbs up. I've respect for your opinion. does this
mean this kind of thing is no longer a problem?.
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I believe it still is but there were quite a few threads about this on
the Eagle newsgroups along with some work-arounds. I don't remember how
it went but Eagle has a pretty powerful user language programming
capability, you can coax it into doing almost anything. Usually someone
else already has and posted the respective ULP file. I haven't yet
checked for that though because I design analog circuitry, mostly at the
transistor level.
Sometimes you may have to ignore a few ERC squawks regarding power pin
names on different nets but I have experienced that in most CAD
programs. My logic stuff typically goes onto the same rail, except for
parts that I use in a more analog fashion and there you can create
another part with separate supply pins. One example would be the
CD4007UBE. Not nice but as long as it works, oh well.
My biggest gripe with Eagle is the inability to create a hierarchical
sheet structure. This is almost a must in a heavily regulated
environment such as med electronics. So for now you have to create a top
layer sheet that is structurally separate from the sublayer sheets.
Several of us placed it on the wish list. After all, Christmas will be
here again in another 11 months ;-)
Library part generation also isn't quite as easy as with OrCad. I am
sorely missing the non-graphical part generation. But after some
pondering and considering the high cost of most other editors I decided
to go for Eagle.
If you need Spice fully integrated with your editor like Jim does, Eagle
may not be the ticket. But for non-IC level designs, running Spice
separately isn't a big deal. Sometimes I catch myself writing the Spice
file on MS-Word. Oh, now I gave away my age....
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com
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Joerg
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 29, 2005 1:31 am Post subject:
Re: Early CAD Panning and Zooming? |
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Hello Matt,
| Quote: | I used an ancient version of Racal-Redac in 1982 that was panning and
zooming . Ran on an equally ancient IBM XT .
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Yes, I remember that one. But ours was a bit more ancient, it ran on a
mainframe that filled a space the size of a corporate board room. Very
rugged software, no crashes. As long as nobody bumped into the 'platter
box', a hard disk the size of a Maytag washer.
As someone mentioned before zooming and panning were absolutely
necessary with these early programs simply because of the very limited
resolution of the screen. My first laptop, afair, 'boasted' 200 pixels
vertically. No backlight but many hours of battery life. I designed
dense boards the size of a B size sheet on it.
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com |
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