Hi there--
I do a lot of control system block diagrams. For now I'm stuck using Simulink but it has some real drawbacks (one of which is that you need to have Simulink on your computer :-) and I'd like to use blockdiag instead. But there are a few features I need. Here's a sample block diagram:
Here's my attempt at doing the same topology in the interactive blockdiag viewer:
- Influencing the layout: I can't seem to influence the automatic layout to put the feedback loops where I want. The "folded" attribute doesn't do the right thing unless you specifically want a linear flow to "wrap" to the next row.
- Circle shapes don't get affected by the "length" and "width" attributes; I need a way to make the circle the side that I want
- It would be really nice to have a way to create a summing node with configurable "+" and "-" signs (Simulink uses a string "|+-" where the symbols are spaced evenly around the 270degree point, and "|" is a space. So "+|-" would give you a "+" symbol at the top, nothing at the left, and a "-" symbol at the bottom.
- It would be really nice to automatically draw junction dots for output branches
- It would be really nice to have a way to include a caption (centered under a block in a slightly smaller typeface) in addition to a label
--Jason