The XCircuit Tutorials

Introduction Getting Started
Tutorial Part 1 Drawing with XCircuit
Tutorial Part 2 Schematic Capture with XCircuit
Tutorial Part 3 Managing Large Projects
Download Download the tutorials

Tutorial Introduction: Getting Started

Welcome to XCircuit, the open-source circuit drawing and schematic capture program written by Tim Edwards. In order to get the most out of this page, you should have already downloaded, compiled, and installed the xcircuit program and its libraries. The first two tutorials correspond to XCircuit version 3.4 (October 2005) or more recent. Tutorial Part 3 corresponds to XCircuit version 3.6 (March 2006) and assumes that XCircuit is compiled with Tcl/Tk interpreter support.
Before reading any tutorial, read the XCircuit Usage page explaining the command-line invocation, the XCircuit window, input methods, and so forth.
For the purposes of the tutorials, XCircuit should be invoked simply by typing "xcircuit" at the shell prompt, without options.

Tutorial Part 1: Drawing with XCircuit

This tutorial explains the basic drawing functions of XCircuit, including drawing all element types, copying, moving, selection, deletion, text, color, zoom and pan functions, libraries, and objects.

Tutorial Part 2: Schematic capture with XCircuit

This tutorial explains the basic functions of XCircuit necessary to generate valid netlist output from a schematic diagram, including use of component libraries, component symbols, parameters, networks, output formats, component number, multiple-page schematics, and buses and taps.

Tutorial Part 3: Managing Large Projects

This tutorial explains advanced features of XCircuit useful for managing large projects with many schematics in a nested hierarchy. It covers standard cells, SPICE models, project libraries, LVS (layout-vs.-schematic), and test bench schematics for simulation.

Download

This download is the tar'd image of everything in the tutorial subdirectory, including both the standard tutorial and the schematic capture tutorial. Note that when untar'd, this will expand into a directory tree with top-level directory named "tutorial".