Circuit diagram drawing.

I believe Kicad got reasonable recommendation's from a discussion a while back on the other channel. I personally have not used it and so cannot give a first hand account.

I did use MS Visio for a spell but found it limiting for circuit diagrams, great for flow charts and system drawings and the like, and of course it is not free and is in a propriety format.

Some people swear by MS paint, and made their own symbol library, Terry KC on here seems to prefer that approach, and he did make a good job of it too I might add, I personally found it difficult to do in paint.

I have drawn Electrical (rather than electronics) control diagrams using Tinycad, this was fairly easy to use as far as these type of programs go.

Whichever you end up using there is nearly always a steepish learning curve when using these packages, unless you are using them on a regular (daily?) basis you become 'ring rusty' very quickly.

Another thing to look for is what libraries of symbols are available for a given package, unless of course you are going to make your own.

There's actually a nice little schematic capture offering in LTSpice - it even includes valves! It's how I drew the circuit of the Portogram amplifier up.

KiCad does have libraries supported by DigiKey, I note. It's open source and runs on multiple platforms: gotta be worth a go, surely? I might try it on the Ubuntu partition on my laptop.

Okay, I've just installed KiCad onto the Ubuntu bit of my machine. I see it too includes valves!

I'll have a play now.

I would be interested to see what you make of it Catho, like I say I have never used it.

Several respected people did recommend it, I made a mental note to try it at some point, although I currently have had neither the time nor the need to try it yet.

Like everything else in life I suspect there is no definitive answer and it will always boil down to personal preference, or whatever is easier to use by the person using a given program, one mans meat....etc...etc.

Well I've just installed it and had a very quick play. Looks promising. There seem to be lots of features and a facility for designing PCBs. Like most of these things it takes a while to master the features and when I have more time, I'll have a go at creating a complete circuit.

I had a play over the weekend and I've actually succeeded in drawing out the circuit of my homebrew power supply. There does seem to be a big however.....I can't seem to save the circuit as a PDF or word document. There just doesn't seem to be a way of doing this unless I'm being completely thick. I have saved it within Kicad itself. I thought it might be in the 'Export to' function but that only gives me 'clipboard'. That doesn't seem to work either....

Open to suggestions if anyone has used it...…!

The manual suggests “ files are generated”, not sure if this is automatic or an option to produce them, from the manual.

During lunch break I had a look on line and found a tutorial and it seems that circuits can be exported in a number of formats including PDF using the 'Plot' facility then you can select which format you want. After that you just say where you want to save the circuit. 

Seems straightforward....why couldn't I find that info last night??

I'll give it a try tonight. 

@nuvistor

If necessary I'd cheat and use the MS snipping tool to paste it into MS Paint, then save as a .png file!

Well I succeeded in saving it as a PDF so the immediate problem is solved. It's actually quite easy but it's a pity the program itself isn't more intuitive. Anyway I know how to do it now and I'm quite impressed wit the program...it's good enough for the few times I'll actually need to use it.

My first effort at drawing a circuit diagram is here:

https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/community/radio/bush-radio-what-model/paged/7/#post-98672

I have converted it to a Jpeg for the forum so it's lost a bit of quality.

Love kicad. Both windows and ubuntu versions work just great... 

I have KiCad! Just never installed it on a PC with a good enough spec to make it viable, much less had a chance play with it!

I've got to admit, that preview looks mighty impressive! ?

I still have not had a chance to have a play with this myself yet, it looks pretty impressive judging from SBs diagram though.

I might try and have a play with it at the weekend, depends if I am working this weekend or not though ? 

If I might offer a wee bit of constructive criticism Rich, rather than put a diode in series with the 2V supply to get 1.4V I'd get the regulator to do it directly by changing the feedback resistors to achieve it. I'm not suggesting you go for 4-wire sensing to get a precise voltage at the valveholder pins, but it's just a bit more.... sanitary!

Well that wasn't my idea actually. I was told that the 317 didn't work well down to 1.4 volts so it was better to aim for 2V and use the diode. I must admit that I wasn't keen but I tried it and it worked. Also the diodes strung across the output as protection add up to about 2.4 volts and wouldn't be much protection at 1.4 if the output of the chip was 'potted down' to 1.4V. Anyone who can come up with a better idea is welcome to suggest an alternative. 

If the 317 does work down to 1.4V OK then D8 and C8 can be dispensed with. That bit doesn't exist in my power supply since I only need the 2 volt output. Can anyone suggest a protection circuit that would work at around 1.6 volts to protect the miniature battery valves?

The reference within is 1.25V and I've never had a problem with them.

As for the protection - comparator and crowbar thyristor?

Posted by: @red_to_black

Some people swear by MS paint, and made their own symbol library, Terry KC on here seems to prefer that approach, and he did make a good job of it too I might add, I personally found it difficult to do in paint.

I must admit that I'm quite hooked on MS Paint and use it for lots of things.

Rather than take this thread completely off course, I think I will continue it in the Coffee Lounge.

Here's an example of the kicad schematic output 

RIAA preamp?