SSI/MSI/LSI Circuit Design/Drawing software?

Recoil42

What do you use, Stupid Technology Subforum?

I'm curious, because it seems like something there would be a ton of software for both freeware and otherwise, but I can't really find that much out there. Most of what I've run into either costs crazy money and is of the professional design full fabrication-process variety, far too complex, or just plain crap.

All I need it something that will let me draw good, clean, simple SSI/MSI diagrams without too much fuss like so and maybe also generate truth tables and the like.

I need to illustrate a whole crapload of circuits in the next couple days for a computer architecture final project, and I'd rather not draw it all by hand or stumble through Microsoft Word's clumsy drawing tools, when there's almost certainly something way easier and more flexible out there.

So, STS, is there anything out there you can recommend?

ben0207

Visio?

ROFISH

Recoil42 wrote: »

like so

U7A should be a 3 input AND gate and use clean outputs from the flipflops. By ANDing the result of the AND, you have a larger propagation delay.

Recoil42

Hah, that's not mine though, notice the URL, it's just an example of what I wanted, I dug it up from Wikipedia.

flatlinegraphics

any decent vector editor should be able to draw lines around.
http://www.inkscape.org/ for a FOSS, illustrator for commercial. you will have to make or find your own symbol libraries for and/or gates, etc..
or visio.

ben0207

Oh, and if you have a Mac or access to one for long enough) I can't recommend OmniGraffle Pro enough. Google it (they have a demo, though I ended up just buying it because it's awesome)

Recoil42

flatlinegraphics wrote: »

any decent vector editor should be able to draw lines around.
http://www.inkscape.org/ for a FOSS, illustrator for commercial. you will have to make or find your own symbol libraries for and/or gates, etc..
or visio.

Hmmm... you don't understand -- I have Illustrator. I have plenty of drawing tools, in fact; Photoshop, Fireworks, Inkscape, etc. etc. etc.

The problem is that if you draw it in illustrator, inkscape, word, etc. etc. etc. it's still just a drawing. And if you want to go change the positioning of a gate, or add something in between, you have to go physically move those points. A regular piece of vector drawing software doesn't recognize these things as nodes and wires, it just sees bezier curves, and all you're drawing is vector art.

I'm looking for something that actually allows you to place down gates, place down chips, and have them be recognized as such and easily editable. Otherwise, things get really complex really fast, and you're just going to have a mess of lines and shapes that are going to be impossible to deal with.

Found this through Wikipedia, anyone familiar with it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDA
http://www.geda.seul.org/

I think I'll try it tonight, looks pretty decent, and almost exactly what I'm looking for:

mr_ekim

If you need something just to draw a schematic, Cadsoft's EAGLE is a pretty good choice, as they offer a limited free version for small applications ($125 for a educational full version) and has the tooling for most of the major digital components you can find on the market. It also has the standard ERC checking and can output to a CAD format for fabrication if you so desire.

If you need something that can be used to draw a schematic AND do some digital simulation, I've used Labcenter's Proteus Lite. It doesn't have as many features of the full version (such as a full VSM suite), but the lite version should be enough to get what you want done.