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Text-based schematics?

neuromodulator

I frequently end up spending a lot of time trying to make my schematics look nice. There's the whole dilemma of when to wire pins and when to just label them. Then of course, you must also figure out the best way to organize everything, where to position the components and when to hierarchize parts. Also, creating new symbols many times requires much more than drawing a box with pins, and can also consume a fair amount of time. This kinda reminds me of LABview, where lot of time is spent on rearranging nodes and wires, when ideally you would want to focus on the logic itself. It feels like there should be a more efficient way to do all this. Maybe using some standardized language? What do you think?

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  • Interesting topic.  I think with analog designs involving opamps and transistors schematic entry would be more efficient than text entry.  In a digital design where you have a series of bussed signals I could see text entry being faster.  Arguably the hierarchical methods in HDL languages could be used for this.  Where you define a component in terms of it's inputs and outputs, along with top level nets for interconnecting between components.  Then you could use 'port mapping' like in VHDL to tie everything together.  Ideally the tool would generate a nice schematic as an output to this text entry so that it's easier to visualize for the person doing the layout.

  • in reply to dang74

    I find the interconnect in HDLs completely incomprehensible.

    So I use a block diagram editor at the top level to hang all the blocks together but I find the HDL much better at describing the logic.

    I know that some other people find the opposite.

    I certainly can't imagine doing analogue design in text.

    I would post an example but I'm supposed to be getting a big design to work right now so no time Frowning2

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    You are not alone with this.  I too have used block diagrams for the very top level.  Sometimes when I am looking at the higher level hierarchical code developed by another person I will translate it into block form manually on piece of paper as a way to help commit the names of the blocks and signals to memory. 

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  • in reply to michaelkellett

    You are not alone with this.  I too have used block diagrams for the very top level.  Sometimes when I am looking at the higher level hierarchical code developed by another person I will translate it into block form manually on piece of paper as a way to help commit the names of the blocks and signals to memory. 

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