XCircuit is a
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
/
X11
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...
and
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
program for drawing publication-quality electrical circuit schematic diagrams and related figures and the production of circuit netlists through schematic capture. XCircuit regards circuits as inherently hierarchical and writes both
PostScript output and hierarchical
SPICE
A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spice ...
netlists. Circuit components are saved in and retrieved from libraries which are fully editable. XCircuit does not separate artistic expression from circuit drawing; it maintains flexibility in style without compromising the power of schematic capture.
History
XCircuit was written and is maintained by Tim Edwards, currently with Efabless Corp., formerly with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. XCircuit was initially written in the summer of 1993 as a drawing program to render circuit diagrams for an undergraduate electrical engineering course in the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering Part-time programs. Since then it has expanded to encompass schematic capture and is used by people all over the world for both presentations and as an EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tool.
PCB layout editing can be accomplished with the program "
PCB" that can use net-lists and other files from XCircuit.
See also
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Comparison of EDA software
This page is a comparison of electronic design automation (EDA) software which is used today to design the near totality of electronic devices. Modern electronic devices are too complex to be designed without the help of a computer. Electronic dev ...
*
List of free electronics circuit simulators List of free analog and digital electronic circuit simulators, available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and comparing against UC Berkeley SPICE.
Some of the following simulators don't include a graphical visual interface, so a separate program must be ...
References
External links
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Free electronic design automation software
Free diagramming software
Electronic design automation software for Linux
Software that uses Tk (software)
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