using open office draw. when you draw a line the line icon goes away and I have to select the line tool again. when drawing a schematic with 16 or 28 pin IC's etc can be a real pain!! how do you draw more than one line without having to select the line icon again?? I have spent about 3 hours with the help file and cannot find any thing on this situation
any help or where to find the info would be greatly appreciated.
Blfstk

I don't know what's causing that, but have you considered using an electrical CAD package for drawing your IC's and then take a screenshot or save as a jpeg? Something like Klogic, KIC, xcircuit, qucs, or electric would all do the job (and probably give you a more complete set of component symbols). They're all in the Debian repositories (so probably also in Ubuntu)...

all oo tools are new windows
r-click the top bar and select " always on top"

but that should not be needed , i have never seen any of them do that close or get buried under the open window .

I would tend to agree with that response, but

• For trivial circuits (say, a couple of passive components and an IC) the learning curve may not be worth it
• You could add kcad and ksimus to the list; for some reason, kde does seem to be particularly well furnished with introductory circuits programs, some are intended for use in connection with simple simulations, but you don't have to use them in that way, if you don't want to
• I wouldn't recommend electric for anything other than circuits internal to ICs, probably digital (eg, gate arrays); it is probably possible to do other things, but it feels a bit unnatural and the end results will be slightly clunky (but I haven't used it for several years, qand it might have become versatile)
• Geda is another option; it is a suite of programs that does a lot more than you require (from the information that you have provided), but using the schematic drawing program on its own is an option

Hi thanks for all the input. I downloaded most of them and tried them all. I am back to open office draw to do the simple schematic and wire wrap stuff I usually want to draw. I found out that if you double click on the line tool it will allow you to make multiple lines. There are couple of caveats in that you cant start the line at the end of the last one you drew, if it is still selected. Otherwise a small learning curve for simple stuff.it also turns out that if you draw a few lines vert and horiz you can copy them and then drag them where you want change their length on and on quite useful. I like to draw flow diagrams for my software projects and this work just fine

again thanks for all the help and input. I didn't realize that there were so many programs coming along some these are quit sophisticated.
blfstk