Help with setup of gEDA and PCB?
 

New to simulation and PCB software. I'm trying to setup gEDA's PCB. I can't seem to figure out the proper syntax for telling the program to use a particular directory to find symbols that I might add.

I'm using the tutorial here:

http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html

as well as here:

http://wiki.geda-project.org/geda:gsch2pcb_tutorial

Instead of wanting to create a link or directory for each separate project, I want to create one directory to house all my added symbols (won't be many). I created ~/gaf/symbols for that purpose, then go into Preferences, select "Library", then type in "~/gaf/symbols".

When I return to the project and open up Window/Library, I find my directory and the symbol files. But when I click on either of the two symbols in there the program abruptly exits.

The two symbols I have in that directory came with the tutorial, so I doubt there is a problem with them.

Contents of both ~/gaf/gafrc and ~/gaf/gschemrc:
(component-library "{$HOME}/gaf/symbols")

It's frustrating that a simple configuration problem/mistake like this would cause the program to crash!

Any insight as to how to properly set this up would be greatly appreciated. I'm running Debian Wheezy 3.2 kernel with latest updates, PCB version 20110918.

Thanks,
Keith Ostertag

Just spitballing here. As I understand it, the '~' notation is not universally understood, and is primarily a shell concept. Try using the full filespec to define your directory names.

--- rod.

Hey Rod- thanks for the thought. I tried the full filespec, and no good. And actually, the example uses the tilde format.

I just discovered part of my problem- I'm confusing sym files with fp files. I was trying to use a sym file for (evidently) what requires a fp (footprint) file...

Back to studying the tutorials to try to see if I can make sense of this...

Thanks,
Keith Ostertag

I have used PCB in the past, and kept symbols & files separate. No Problem. I knocked out something quick & dirty in an afternoon, after spending 2 days familiarization.

What I would do is simply make your symbols somewhere, and simply copy them in a terminal into the symbols library set, so you would have something like
--Passive/
--Discrete/
--74XX/
--My_Symbols/