Advice on choosing a schematic editor?

I use Kicad it has a schematic editor that can be used stand alone. In case you didn't know Kicad is a well known circuit layout tool and is comprised of schematic editor and layout editor. For simple things that i am not going to make a board for which is most of my projects the schematic editor works well. It is also free and there is a version for windows and linux, probably mac too.

@noweare

KiCad is the way to go, yes it has a steep learning curve, but in the end well worth the effort.

Thanks @noweare, @codecage

I see that it is open source, has lot of tutorials, up to date documentation and even a kicad 2025 convention. And saw links for stripboard and proboard layouts. Good.
My Ubuntu (studio 24.04LTS) has kicad v7, so I will update the the current v9 using Kicad's official ppa for Ubuntu

@codecage I bought a book to help with learning it and it really helped. The title is "Kidcad like a pro" by Dr. Peter Dalmaris.

@noweare @fransk

Great book! The ones I have used over the years as the versions changed!!

Posted by: @noweare

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@codecage book "Kidcad like a pro"

Thank you @codecage for you reminder. I found the book again somewhere on a book shelve. I even found the resources/errata web page too.

But my old book is for kiCad version 5, current is 9.0. And my book was 2nd edition, and the current book is 4th edition, actually 2 books.

You seem to have kept the book up to date. Would it be wise to invest in the new book(s)? It problaby is not updated for the current kiCad v9

@fransk Yeah, the latest book I have is not version 9, I think it covers 7 though, but I haven't upgarded to 9 yet anyway.

For better or for worse I decided to try EASYEDA. Its available for desktop but I didn't install it Instead I used the web version. I think most users work this way but that's only a guess.

There is definitely a learning curve with such complex and pwerful tools. And actually schematic editing isn't terribly difficult compared to navigating its enormous database of componentry. It seems to be filled with endless variations of common parts and many of them are user contributed and have slight differences but very similar names. And its easy as a beginner to contribute but not so obvious how to do it. Cleaning out of this database would be a big help but its labour intensive and designers wan to build not send their lives tidying up other folks stuff. 

But having said that EASYEDA is an amazingly powerful tool that costs nothing to get started with. Being integrated into the PCB manufactining chain, in principle you can sit down, design, layout and go through all the steps needed to get a manufactured product of your own design delivered to you door from a modern powerful advanced high quality production line in basically any quantity you want, from single units to thousands.

Yes it is on the cloud but you can export and download all your designs.

Since I have an open source orientation privacy and secrecy of my design files is low on my list of priorities in the context I am using the service. But those who need design secrecy aren't my audience.

I'm no expert on EASYEDA. Its scope and power go far beyond my needs. But despite this, its leaning curve for newcomers isn't bad. I use it with firefox on Linux. When we had an internal class on EASYEDA we used windows 10 and the experience is essentially the same.

I strongly support KICAD but don't use it. 

I tried Tinkercad and the limitations quickly turned me off. It basically forces you to only use breadboards.