HobECAD Goals

My overall vision is that electronics hobbiests will be able to find one another via the Internet and easily share and modify one another's project designs.

The goals of HobECAD are:

Low Learning Curve

Professional tools are quite sophisticated and can require a substantial investment in time to learn how to use them. An ECAD system with a high learning curve is totally inappropriate for someone who "dabbles" in electronic projects.

Low Production Rates

A professional ECAD system is geared towards medium to high production rates. Again, an ECAD system geared for the electronics hobbiest, should be geared towards a a production quantities of one or two.

Low Cost

The cost of acquiring an using an ECAD system geared for the hobbiest market should be quite low, otherwise the potential users will not be able to afford it.

Platform Independence

The available platforms to users seem to be increasing rather than decreasing. (This is good!) In order to be as platform independent as possible, the HobECAD code is written to use the X window system, which is now available on just about every imaginable platform. For reasons having to do with my personal preferences, the source code for HobECAD is written in my very own programming language called STIPPLE. Eventually, STIPPLE code will be quite portable, since the STIPPLE compiler outputs ANSI-C code (but for now, I would not recommend attempting to take any STIPPLE code.)