A schematic editor is a tool for
schematic capture of
electrical circuit
An electrical network is an interconnection of electrical components (e.g., batteries, resistors, inductors, capacitors, switches, transistors) or a model of such an interconnection, consisting of electrical elements (e.g., voltage sour ...
s or
electronic circuit
An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electri ...
s.
Schematic editors replaced manual drawing of schematic diagrams, but they still retain the capability of outputting schematics on specially formatted sheets. At the same time modern schematic editors capture schematic data in a way suited for automatic processing by further stages of the design cycle.
Besides basic drawing and visualization capabilities, modern schematic editors typically provide the following capabilities:
* Capture electrical properties and other attributes of components, wires, nets and pins.
* Hierarchical way of design.
* Generate
netlist
In electronic design, a netlist is a description of the connectivity of an electronic circuit. In its simplest form, a netlist consists of a list of the electronic components in a circuit and a list of the nodes they are connected to. A netwo ...
s and other common representations of the designed circuit from schematic.
* Generate documentation.
* Generate
Gerber files to CAM.
* Libraries of standard components.
* Automatically detect and report errors in the schematic.
* Input designs from various formats, such as
VHDL
The VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) is a hardware description language (HDL) that can model the behavior and structure of digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from the system level down to that of logic gat ...
,
Verilog
Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits at the register-transfer level of abstraction. It is a ...
,
EDIF.
They are also used for
prototyping and test circuits before create them in real life.
See also
*
Comparison of EDA software
*
Comparison of computer-aided design editors
References
Electronic design automation
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