Forums » CircuitLab Feature Requests

Hi,

after playing around with the circuit editor and finding it quite intuitive to use I'd have a few improvement suggestions:

• in Create mode, make component selection "sticky"; right now I have to re-select "wire" for every piece of wire I want to place. Other editors allow to place several segments by selecting"wire" once and then placing as many as I want with a single mouse click each. At least make this behavior an option.

• Mark T-connections clearly with dots. I.e. when 3 or 4 lines meet at a point, place a dot to indicate they are indeed connected. The "bridge" for a crossing (where the crossing lines are NOT connected) looks nice, but I keep getting worried whether a bare crossing means connected or not.

• Right now it seems I can only connect to the pin of a component. It would be better if one could also connect to the center of a wire. Or did I miss anything?

Regarding the first and third issue: It took me a while to notice, but one can click and drag from any terminal node to start a new wire; one need not go back to the menu, and the end point of a new wire can be the center of an existing wire.

But I DO concur that the lack of connection dots makes me very nervous as well -- I have difficulty visualizing which wires are connected.

1. I would second the request to have component selections be "sticky", perhaps until Esc is pressed, or if the user double clicks the component in the toolbox.

2. I also think it would be nice if connections were elastic, such that if I move a component, connected wires stayed connected and stretched to the new position. (The complicating factor would be that then there would need to be some way to break these connections).

But in general this is fantastic tool! I am reading through the first several chapters of Horowitz and Hill and it is really nice to be able to come to CircuitLab to simulate the circuits they depict when I am having trouble following what they are talking about! The interface is intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing.

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback. The "sticky" behavior for dropped elements has now been implemented by using the Shift key. After selecting an element from the build box, you can hold Shift and click on the grid to drop an element and keep clicking to drop more of that element as long as you keep holding shift.

Let me know if that works for you all.

Very nice. The shift key for sticky behavior works great. Thanks for the speedy implementation!

What do you think about the aforementioned elastic connections and dots at connected intersections?

(As a side note, Horowitz and Hill state that the little half circle bridge for crossing but non connecting lines is no longer standard, and that instead a dot is used for connecting lines and no dot for non-connecting lines. But even if that is true, I find the little bridge much more intuitive. And I think particularly for beginners and hobbyists--a key part of the target audience of this site--the bridge notation is more clear even if it is not quite "standard". But I would still say dots at connected intersections would be nice, and will help the beginner/hobbyist learn "standard" schematic notation.)

cool

I'd say connection markings can never be too explicit. So bridge for no connection, dot for connections seems the best overall solution to me (and yes, I know what Horowitz says in his book. Let's see what he says in his upcoming new revision, rumored to appear within the next year or so :-)

Hey! I find your application very useful. I wish to use this in teaching physics in highschool. I usually do my circuits in paint.. which is a pain. This is really useful. MY SUGGESTION would be to add a general consumer element .. like a ligh bulb..the circle with an x inside.. in the essentials possibly

I love this app! Needs a component editor though.

I agree with elastic wire connections. It's tedious to reconnect the wires after moving a component around.

And on that same topic, I keep wanting to use the arrow keys to nudge components into a better position (with the wires remaining connected!)

Hi all,

@signality you are certainly not being greedy. Helpful feedback like all the feedback in this thread is the only way we will be able to keep making CircuitLab better.

In regards to the graph display, you can hide/show traces by clicking on their label in the legend. This should alleviate the clutter a little bit until we give you the ability to plot different traces on different plots.

... and may I re-iterate my request to allow user defined offset scaling of the plot axes as an option?

A quick comment about wires and dots. The bridge for crossing wires is very helpful.

For years now I have only ever allowed 3 wires to join in a T. Never 4 in a +. If I need to join 4 wires then I draw them as 2 closely spaced T's. That way there's never any confusion over whether wires join or cross. If you have a bridge and not joining dots then this approach allows you top draw unambiguous circuit diagrams.

That said I'd still prefer to see dots ...

I fear that I can't really draw any more of my circuits in Circuit Lab until you guys have a way to cross wires without them connecting.

For instance my XOR BJT Circuit has like 4 different voltage sources because of this.

I love this tool but I want to design circuits so complex as a digital calculator with no ICs (using only bare bones components such as transistors, resistors & buttons [BTW... I know you have logic gates in the build box, Thank You so much for those!]).

My next step is to make a keypad circuit that outputs a 4 bit number but with the grid of the keypad this is impossible without crossing wires.

I prefer the industry standard dots for connections.

You can join nets using netnames. This is your circuit with no crossings:

But crossed wires don't connect in CircuitLab.

This is your circuit with 5V connected by wires with bridges inserted by CircuitLab where wires cross:

The netlist for both is identical.

Oh, cool. They fixed this with bridges. That solves one problem.

Another thing that might be a problem is the page size to fit my circuit on.

Example: I am not sure if my circuit will fit since my 4 bit adder will be like 5 times as large as it is now.

Looks like a good example for a feature request for hierarchical circuit diagram support (hint, hint!).

:)

Bridges solves part of the problem. The other part is when we want to have wires which connect in the middle:

Adding dots at the connecting points would make this much more readable and be consistent with other tools.

I often use the program just as a drawing tool, for example to make questions or diagrams for my class. One component I'd like to have is an arbitrary impedance. Perhaps just a rectangle that I could label Z1 or Z2 etc. The Laplace block is almost what I need, but without the arrow.

Something like this?

:)

Yeah...how do you enter that rectangle symbol?

If you place a resistor, when you double click on it (or Right-click > Edit Parameters) you'll see there's a box labelled DISP. The US options draw the resistor as a zig-zag line. The IEC options draw it as the box in the example.

https://www.circuitlab.com/docs/faq/#q_iec_european_resistor

I have also clarified this in the example so please excuse me if this now makes your question look redundant to future readers!

:)

I know it's a rather old topic but It would be nice to have an option to choose our preference about wire crossing: with OR without the little bridge when there is no connection. Actually it seems there is no way to do so and the little bridge is a little obsolete!

Thank you for your interest!