Circuit designing software?

[Newc]

Ok, once in a while I like to jimmy around with pickup wiring schemes, but rather than spend 4 months with a handful of jumpers and trying to scribble it all down or take a picture of the finished mess before soldering, I thought it'd be neat to have some sort of freeware/dirt cheap software that gives color-coded wires and simple block connections.
Anyone know of such sh1t? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Newc

[The Chase]

Re: Circuit designing software?

I have a program which determines values of resistors by the colours. If you want I can translate it for you

[Newc]

Re: Circuit designing software?

I have a carboard card that does that [img]/images/graemlins/poke.gif[/img]

Newc

[iced_earth]

Re: Circuit designing software?

Not exactly what you are looking for (no color-coded wires, but at least you can label them)... but you could use it to design a CPU if you wanted to. If you want a copy (I have version 4, there is a newer version available) I can email it to you.

Logic Works 4:
http://capilano.com/LogicWorks/

On Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...ce&s=books

-Mike

[axeman81]

Re: Circuit designing software?

back in high school we used a program to design print circuit boards...I remember it gave me the blue screen of death just when I had finished spending 2 hours on a design during a test, got so friggin' pissed I just got up and left class! can't recall what it was called tho' [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[beaner]

Re: Circuit designing software?

One of these might do the trick (note there are several pages, this is just page one).

http://www.electronics-lab.com/downl...tic/index.html

Pspice is popular too, though it's discontinued now, it's still available for download and there's a bunch of spice stuff online.
http://www.orcad.com/downloads/schematics/default.asp

[Newc]

Re: Circuit designing software?

Thanks for the links fellers, but those appear to have more than I need - basically I'm looking for a "doodler" with simple pre-rendered graphics (2D, Vector, whatever) that you drag around and stick "wires" on [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
Something to make things look like the diagrams at Seymour Duncan.

I'll probably just have to stick with Paint Shop.
Actually soon after posting the request, I made a DPDT switch and 5-way switch in Paint Shop, and a palette of "wires" that I can just copy/paste into an image. Now all I need to do is make pickups with leads and knobs and such.

Newc

[beaner]

Re: Circuit designing software?

Ah, simple doodling. I have the program for you. I thought you're idea of a doodle program for diagrams was great. So I decided to write one. I figured starting with an open source paint type program and adding a toolbar of electronic components was the best way to go. Went looking and found a program that pretty much does all that already. There is a open source/freeware program called Tux Paint.

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/

It's VERY juvenille. In fact, it's basically a windows "paintbrush" type program, but made for 3 year olds. The coolest thing about it, and what would make it worthwhile in your case, is the rubberstamp feature. Instead of having to cut and paste from another app or window, you can create your pickups, pots, etc and save them as rubber stamps. Which is essentailly a 3 year olds version of inserting the component from a tool bar. Then you can pick colors for wires, etc and draw until your hearts content.

Only drawback is everything is saved as png files. Shouldn't too much of a problem though, as png is convertable by lots of other programs (paint shop too I think).

I downloaded it, looked at the documentation, got it running, created a single coil pickup rubberstamp in paintbrush, converted it to png, added it to the stamp 'toolbar', drew a diagram and printed it, all in less than half an hour. I do suggest you run the config tool first though. Otherwise the default mode is fullscreen at 800x600 resolution. Much better in a window IMO.

Dave