terry hancock

No, I doubt it. PythonCAD is a 2D mechanical CAD drawing system.
I don't think it would be anywhere near what this guy wants. They're
just different applications. He's looking for an electronic CAD system or
EDA, I'm pretty sure (or looking to write one, rather).

Anybody that says he's not "looking for a CAD program" but "looking
for a CAD program that doesn't piss me off" is probably a power-user. ;-D

Not a reflection on PythonCAD, though -- it's a pretty cool project,
I recommend it to anyone interested in exploring general purpose
2D CAD drawing systems. Among other advantages, it is written in
Python, so probably somewhat easier to script (haven't tried, though),
and it uses a self-defined XML format for CAD drawings, which is an
interesting standards move, given that free CAD formats have hitherto
been pretty limited, leaving professionals stuck with proprietary binary
formats, and not very happy with them (there are technical reasons for
not liking the DXF format which is a free format, albeit created by
AutoDesk).

At present I believe that PythonCAD is about on par with QCAD, but
I'd bet on PythonCAD for potential, because of these design advantages.

Cheers,
Terry


--
Terry Han**** ( han**** at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com

terry hancock

Heh. Well I didn't use the word "whatsoever" did I. ;-)

No you're right, if you're looking to write code from the ground-up, then
it's certainly true that this would help. But I pointed him at Gnu EDA,
because it already seems to do *most* of what he was looking for, I think.

There's also PCB and zcircuit to be considered. All of these are C language
programs, I believe, and he's already an experienced C/C++ programmer it
would seem.

OTOH, PythanCAD serves as an example of why he might be better off
to *write* the CAD program in Python and use C/C++ extension modules
as needed, instead of embedding Python into a C/C++ application.

But I kind of got the impression he was attached to using C++ for the job,
which would not be *my* choice, but is certainly preferred by a lot of
programmers.

There is another, community-oriented reason for writing it in Python and
looking at PythonCAD, of course. It would not be unreasonable to write
an EDA/PCB/autorouter application that worked IN PythonCAD. That
would be pretty cool. It would also be a good way to leverage community
support for the project.

But I have a feeling this is not going to be the way the OP will want to go,
since he came asking only how to embed Python into a C/C++ application.

--
Terry Han**** ( han**** at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com

sonicspammersgotohellsmooth

Hi,

Actually I was thinking of doing the bulk of everything in Python, and
then embedding a Python interpreter into the CAD program. Anything in
C++ would be to speed up critical things, like rules checking, etc. I
have looked at python cad (found it a year or two ago) and am inspired
by it; I'm glad someone's done the legwork, although it's a long way
from anything EDA related (well, the 2d stuff could be used for
schematics). I have also looked at gEDA and found it lacked the
"modern feel" I'm looking for. It seems people are stuck on batch
processing of text descriptions, and NOT integrating completely the
front-to-back design process. I'd like to write something that
(eventually) would actually have an install program and run like a
normal app, on Windoze or Linux. Most of my experience with open
source software is that it's not user-oriented. Finally, if I write
something that's cool, I may try to make money from it, which means I'm
not sure how much I'm going to want to release to the general public.
This means I can't use code from pythonCad, etc., if I want to keep it
propietary. I could make it free for noncommercial use. Anyway,
that's a long way off. My original question was about how to run an
interpreter within the interpreter, and whether that's what needs to be
done to have some scripting capabilities which separated the user's
code from the main application.

Michael

terry hancock

No, I doubt it. PythonCAD is a 2D mechanical CAD drawing system.
I don't think it would be anywhere near what this guy wants. They're
just different applications. He's looking for an electronic CAD system or
EDA, I'm pretty sure (or looking to write one, rather).

Anybody that says he's not "looking for a CAD program" but "looking
for a CAD program that doesn't piss me off" is probably a power-user. ;-D

Not a reflection on PythonCAD, though -- it's a pretty cool project,
I recommend it to anyone interested in exploring general purpose
2D CAD drawing systems. Among other advantages, it is written in
Python, so probably somewhat easier to script (haven't tried, though),
and it uses a self-defined XML format for CAD drawings, which is an
interesting standards move, given that free CAD formats have hitherto
been pretty limited, leaving professionals stuck with proprietary binary
formats, and not very happy with them (there are technical reasons for
not liking the DXF format which is a free format, albeit created by
AutoDesk).

At present I believe that PythonCAD is about on par with QCAD, but
I'd bet on PythonCAD for potential, because of these design advantages.

Cheers,
Terry


--
Terry Han**** ( han**** at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com

peter hansen

As an engineer who's worked extensively in both kinds of systems
(primarily designing microcontroller-based circuit boards), and a
programmer who's stolen useful ideas from endless amounts of other
people's code, I'll say only that I disagree with your implication that
looking at PythonCAD will give him no useful ideas whatsoever about how
certain aspects of CAD programs could be handled. PCB layout programs
do, after all, have to do the basic work of displaying circuits (which
as you know are generally shown as 2D drawings).

-Peter

peter hansen

As an engineer who's worked extensively in both kinds of systems
(primarily designing microcontroller-based circuit boards), and a
programmer who's stolen useful ideas from endless amounts of other
people's code, I'll say only that I disagree with your implication that
looking at PythonCAD will give him no useful ideas whatsoever about how
certain aspects of CAD programs could be handled. PCB layout programs
do, after all, have to do the basic work of displaying circuits (which
as you know are generally shown as 2D drawings).

-Peter

terry hancock

Heh. Well I didn't use the word "whatsoever" did I. ;-)

No you're right, if you're looking to write code from the ground-up, then
it's certainly true that this would help. But I pointed him at Gnu EDA,
because it already seems to do *most* of what he was looking for, I think.

There's also PCB and zcircuit to be considered. All of these are C language
programs, I believe, and he's already an experienced C/C++ programmer it
would seem.

OTOH, PythanCAD serves as an example of why he might be better off
to *write* the CAD program in Python and use C/C++ extension modules
as needed, instead of embedding Python into a C/C++ application.

But I kind of got the impression he was attached to using C++ for the job,
which would not be *my* choice, but is certainly preferred by a lot of
programmers.

There is another, community-oriented reason for writing it in Python and
looking at PythonCAD, of course. It would not be unreasonable to write
an EDA/PCB/autorouter application that worked IN PythonCAD. That
would be pretty cool. It would also be a good way to leverage community
support for the project.

But I have a feeling this is not going to be the way the OP will want to go,
since he came asking only how to embed Python into a C/C++ application.

--
Terry Han**** ( han**** at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com

sonicspammersgotohellsmooth

Hi,

Actually I was thinking of doing the bulk of everything in Python, and
then embedding a Python interpreter into the CAD program. Anything in
C++ would be to speed up critical things, like rules checking, etc. I
have looked at python cad (found it a year or two ago) and am inspired
by it; I'm glad someone's done the legwork, although it's a long way
from anything EDA related (well, the 2d stuff could be used for
schematics). I have also looked at gEDA and found it lacked the
"modern feel" I'm looking for. It seems people are stuck on batch
processing of text descriptions, and NOT integrating completely the
front-to-back design process. I'd like to write something that
(eventually) would actually have an install program and run like a
normal app, on Windoze or Linux. Most of my experience with open
source software is that it's not user-oriented. Finally, if I write
something that's cool, I may try to make money from it, which means I'm
not sure how much I'm going to want to release to the general public.
This means I can't use code from pythonCad, etc., if I want to keep it
propietary. I could make it free for noncommercial use. Anyway,
that's a long way off. My original question was about how to run an
interpreter within the interpreter, and whether that's what needs to be
done to have some scripting capabilities which separated the user's
code from the main application.

Michael

david macquigg

On 24 Aug 2005 13:48:13 -0700, "sonicSpammersGoToHellSmooth"

Sounds like we have similar backgrounds and motivations. I have a
project started along these lines, but I haven't had time to work on
it for the last few months.
http://www.ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/
Project page
EDA Tools Projects:
An Open-Source Platform for Front-End IC Design cdp_tut01-a1.zip
cdp_tut01-a1.tar.gz
The goal of this project is an easily-learned, universal, open-source,
circuit design platform that will allow IC designers to use whatever
tools they want for design entry, simulation, and display of results.
The platform should provide a simple GUI, basic services such as
storage of tool setups, and should define a simple, standard interface
for each class of tool. Most of the work will be in do***enting the
design and construction of the platform, using a simple scripting
language ( Python ) and GUI toolkit ( Qt ) so that others may easily
follow the pattern and extend the platform to support new and more
varied tools.
------

Take a look also at the MyHDL link from the main page. This is a
similar effort for digital design. Mine is mostly ****og.

The discouraging thing about the EDA tools situation is that no matter
how loudly design engineers complain about the poor quality of the
proprietary tools they are using, there is very little interest in
participating in an open-source project. They just can't see how it
would ever do what their expensive tools do now.

There is a similar lack of interest in the academic community. None
of this is likely to lead to publications in scholarly journals.

--
Dave

sonicspammersgotohellsmooth

Cool, I went to the UofA for my MS in ECE, 2000. I did my theses under
Chuck Higgins. --
http://neuromorph.ece.arizona.edu/pubs/ma_schwager_msthesis.pdf

The tools we had were constantly underwhelming me, so I've been
thinking for years that a properly designed new toolset for students
should be marketable, etc. I'll take a look at your site (although I
think I may have come across it before.)

Michael