Files used/created by gschem

There are several files which gschem uses. Here is a list and a brief explanation of each:

• *.sch Schematic files. These files contain components, nets, text, and sometimes primitive objects (like lines, circles, box etc...) Schematics do not contain pins. Schematic filenames should follow this convention: name_#.sch where:
  • name is a text string which describes what this schematic contains.

  • _# is an underscore and a number (like _1, _2, _7, _13, etc...) This number is used to sequence schematic pages in a multiple page schematic.

  • .sch is the schematic extension/suffix. It is important the schematic pages have this extension.

  Schematic files are pure ASCII and will always be pure ASCII. gEDA does not support any binary file formats. The file format for schematics is described in the gEDA file formats document.

• *.sym Symbol files. The schematic and symbol file formats are identical. gschem (or a text editor) is used to create symbol files as well as schematics. Symbol files contain lines, circles, boxes, arcs, pins, text, and attributes.

  The naming convention for symbol files is: name-#.sym where:

  • name is a text string which describes what the symbol represents.

  • -# is a dash and a number (like -1, -2 etc...) The number is used to allow for a symbols to have the same name yet different contents. There might be multiple representations for resistors so these symbols should be called: resistor-1.sym, resistor-2.sym, and resister-3.sym.

  • .sym is the symbol extension/suffix. It is important the symbols have this extension.

  The way of specifying hierarchy is by using the source= attribute. Please see the master attribute document for info on this mechanism.

  The hierarchy mechanism is still in heavy flux, so there might be some more changes.

• system-gschemrc
   /.gEDA/gschemrc
  gschemrc Resource files. These contain guile (scheme) keywords which control the various configurable parameters. All three files may exist and are searched in the above listed order. system-gschemrc contains system wide defaults.  /.gEDA/gschemrc lives in each users home directory and contains project wide defaults. gschemrc lives in each project directory and contains project specific defaults. See the section below on the resource file for more info.

• gschem.log Log file. This file contains informative, error, warnings etc... messages when gschem was run. This file is created in the working directory that gschem was started in. This allows the user to preserve log files between independent projects.

TBA: Suggested format for projects