I came across this in a trade magazine, Chip Design, and copy excerpts that suggest what the "best of breed" tools can do. The author sees the collection of abilities as most valuable, and it seems not to be a copyright conflict to use a similar collection of features, just common sense.
The parts in quotes are from Clive (Max) Maxfield's article about Agilent's Advanced Design System 2008 software release: http://www.chipdesignmag.com/display.php?articleId=2011&issueId=26 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Does this sound familiar?, "However, the part that really grabbed my attention was the fact that they've completely revamped the ADS graphical user interface (GUI). The reason I'm so interested in this area is that I spend so much of my time fighting with interfaces for other tools that appear to have been created by someone from another planet (or at least, someone who has never actually used the tool themselves)." He likes "integration" and "the new three-dimensional (3D) representation", both of which we see GPL methods for on the horizon. By integration, I'm pretty sure he means interprocess communication, (IPC). He says, "you control it using the same highly-intuitive usage model as for Google Earth", which confuses me -- I thought it was flat only...but I'm thinking the blender 3D mouse GUI is what he is talking about. He says, "Designs can be "stretched" in the vertical dimension as an aid to seeing what's going on inside the various planes". I like the stretch idea for PCB stackup viewing. He notes, "visualization engine also supports the ability to define and manipulate "cut-planes". That's a thing that might be tough to code, but if any of the 3D code/toolkits used to make the view supported that, it would be valuable for quickly getting inputs for use by a two-D field solver. So, that's all it takes today to be "5th ranked in EDA". John Griessen -- Ecosensory Austin TX _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
