Forums » CircuitLab Feature Requests

I think this has been mentioned a few times, but I really think it needs a thread.

Elastic Wires

By this, I mean to have the wires a component is connected to stay connected when you drag it. Obviously you still need to be able to disconnect the wires, so maybe hold shift and drag to move a component without keeping the attached wires? I think the most complicated aspect of this would have to be a slight rework of the wire system, as dragging a component would often lead to 90 bends being added or removed from the interconnects.

This is from the perspective of a 3rd year EE student, where I found that a decent chunk of my time using this great new tool is moving components to fit new ones, then going back and re attaching the wires. It is definitely something that stood out to me when I started using it, as almost all other schematic capture tools I have used implement this.

Anyway, just something else to add to the towering list of requests :P

I'd really like to see what opinions other people have on this, so please post below :)

+1 This would be very nice.

+1 this is one thing that's really needed!

+1 with autorouting, too, but this is hard to do well, if other schematic editors are any indication.

+1, I started using CircuitLab in hopes it would support this feature, sad it doesn't. :(

+1 This is a must!

+1

Editing small circuits is OK without but moving anything in diagrams with more than a few nets is very time consuming.

However, if you can do it then it should clearly indicate if two nets are inadvertently joined. Otherwise all the time saved in editing individual nets is wasted in debugging the havoc caused by the accidental net join.

Note that in some ways much of the problem can be avoided by naming nets and breaking the circuit up into smaller blocks just joined by net names. Doesn't do much for circuit human readability but saves a lot of faff in editing.