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Bring Industry-Standard Usability to Open-Source Innovation! Xschem, the powerful open-source schematic editor developed over two decades by a dedicated individual, is transforming the way designers approach electronic circuit design. Despite its robust capabilities and growing adoption (even a course at Stanford!), Xschem’s user experience falls short of the streamlined, intuitive standards set by expensive industry tools like Cadence Virtuoso, which costs $8,000 a year per license. Imagine the possibilities if Xschem were not just free, but also a joy to use! With 50 targeted enhancements on the horizon, we can make Xschem a competitive, user-friendly alternative that empowers designers everywhere. Join us in this mission to democratize high-quality design tools and make Xschem a true game-changer!
Planned enhancements:
1. Fluid click and drag on objects to move, while maintaining wire connections.
2. Cadence-style property forms - get a professional look.
3. Logging of all user interactions to enable macros and script creation from log files.
4. Cadence-style right-mouse click-and-drag to zoom - DONE! Thank you, Chayan Deb.
5. Command interpreter window, like Cadence (shows log of commands and system messages, and has a command entry pane).
6. Cadence-style yellow dot cursor. DONE! Thank you Stefan Schippers!
7. Cadence-style snap cursor indicating current snap point for wire start/end. DONE! Thank you Chayan Deb!
8. Option to switch between crossing/enclosing of objects with selection rectangle for inclusion in selected set.
9. Keep selected set selected when current command is aborted.
10. Permit descend without requiring current schematic to be saved.
11. Create instance command should be ready to place most recently placed cell again, not require selection from browser.
12. After an instance is placed, stay in instance-create and give user the option to place more instances of the same cell.
13. Display current command prompt on status bar (e.g., 'Enter first point of wire segment').
14. Orthogonal wire routing between first point and current mouse position - DONE! Thank you, Chayan Deb.
15. Flexible key bindings - currently all key bindings (shortcuts) are hard-coded. With the enhancement, TCL code can be used to let the user pick arbitrary key combinations for built-in commands and user-defined functions.
16. Make wire-label a fundamental object - like wire and text, not a component that needs to be placed from a library.
17. Menu item and TCL command to save changed settings to defaults so that they are available upon next launch.
18. Cadence-style library manager - showing available libraries all the time, rather than being visible only when placing components.
19. Cadence-style library structure - directory with sub-directory for each cell, rather than only one directory containing a bunch of .sch and .sym files.
20. Better support for multiple windows (currently, with one schematic open, if one wants to open another one through File > Open, Xschem wants to open it within the same window).
21. Provide a way, through TCL, to access properties of any object - wire label, pin, wire, instance, etc.
22. Improved Cadence-style net highlighting. The current implementation is pretty good. It can be enhanced with bindkey support.
23. Provide outline rectangles (already exists - need to fix UX)
24. Auto-generate the symbol from schematic using a rectangle rather than four lines, which needs the user to do four delete operations. DONE! Thank you Stefan Schippers!
25. Click and drag for rectangle or polygon edge
26. Support similar use model to Cadence's o=car(geGetSelSet()) and then o~>?? to look at properties. Currently, we have selected_set for things other than wire and selected_wire
27. Error message calling out line number when parsing xschemrc. DONE! Thank you Stefan Schippers
28. Allow users to run from anywhere, not just the src directory (DONE! Thank you Claude Code! Waiting on SS to merge)
29. ... and more ...