Dia as an ECAD

["Diego Jacobi" <jacobidiego gmail com>]

Hallo.

I am an Electronic Engineering student and i would like to start some day a good, open and portable Electronic CAD with GTK.

For such a project to be done, some common-use widgets has to be done.
The program would be splitted in 2 programs like with Proteus ISIS and ARES and will have to be able to simulate with ngspice.
That would be the goal.

The schematics program will need a widget capable of make autorouting of electric paths, i mean, if i link A with B, the algoritm has to add an ortogonal path to it. Most of this functionality is already implemented on DIA, but there are some that i am not so sure:

- Support for scripted animations like changing a color when a device turns on, moving parts, like an arrow selecting a choice, rotatory parts like motors, etc. This will be only used simulation is running.
- User interaction, like clicking events.
- Grouping of objects on multiple layers, for the drawing of components, some layers have to be able to be disabled, like backgrounds.
- System wide layers, and user wide layers.
- Different kind of objects, like "schematicsymbol", "drawing", "pcbpackage", "animation-buttons", "logical", "analog", "graphicalprogramming", etc.


http://www.ieeproteus.com/fotos/vsm001.gif
That is the program that i want to clone.

And related to the schematics should be a PCB designer with real world scale and printing, and fixed sizes for each component.

Each electronic device would have, an schematic representation, a real world scaled package representation and an scripted behavior (maybe with python) for simulation.

Also it is common to include LaPlace transformations for Signal and System analisys which mostly like graphical programming (like LabView), which will also need some animation support.

As i say, animation here means changing colors, line styles, or images, maybe enabling/disabling layers per component, etc.



I think that DIA, with a bit of customizations, could fit to most of its functionalities, but what do you think?
Can i in the future look into DIA fot the use of its widget fot that kind of functionalities or should i learn how to start my own, maybe with some gtked canvas?


Cheers
Diego