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# WHY XSCHEM?

## Have been a Cadence Virtuoso user for many years, in different companies.

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- Long startup time
- Creating new components way too complicated (you need a CDF, ask your CAD support and file a ticket).
- Memory Hog, keeps growing until all Virtual memory exhausted, then crash.
- One process handles all design windows. Process crashes, all work on all windows lost.
- Netlist extraction and many other functions are slow since all is implemented in skill language.
- Proprietary file format.

## Most Open source schematic editors are not for VLSI

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- Gschem (or its fork, lepton-schematic) and Kicad's eeschema, can not handle complex VLSI designs.
- Xcircuit is one of the very few Open Source tools i found that is good for VLSI design. Has very accurate graphics rendering, allows arbitrary rotations, uses postscript as schematic save format. This makes scripted generation of schematic files a bit complex. Certainly one of the best tools from graphic quality standpoint.