Using Circuit Macros

Alan Robert Clark

January 25, 2026

1 Introduction

It may seem very odd (and there again :-) that my choice of graphics package is a text-based command language, as opposed to these fancy GUI pointey and clickey things, occasionally known as CAD packages. Some of this background is covered in why I run GNU packages. Other reasons for the aversion to point and click things is that your hand is constantly reaching for the rodent…

And who of you have never had the frustration of attempting to get things to line-up, snapgrids and large cursors notwithstanding?

Again, unless you have a fairly fancy and expensive package, with a decent digitizer tablet, using element templates (op-amps, inductors) etc is difficult. Also I find myself constantly grouping and ungrouping things in order to move them or copy them etc. All this falls away with the Circuit Macros, written by Dwight Aplevich. The up-to-date version can be found at https://ctan.org/pkg/circuit-macros I have been using Circuit Macros exclusively for all graphics since 1999, I think it was version 4.something. A quarter of a century…… Thank you Dwight!

As a simple example, try a point-and-click solution to placing the bottom 100 k\(\Omega \) resistor exactly centrally! (BTW, my recommended point-and-click CAD is still xfig(), but I simply don’t use it.) (Click on picture for Code, and Browser Back)