A Schematic editor is a tool for schematic capture

Schematic capture

Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer...

 of electrical circuits or electronic circuit

Electronic circuit

An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow...

s.

Schematic editors replaced manual drawing of schematic diagrams, but they still retain the capability of outputting schematics on specially formatted sheets. At the same time modern schematic editors capture schematic data in a way suited for automatic processing by further stages of the design cycle.

Besides basic drawing and visualization capabilities, modern schematic editors typically provide the following:

• The ability to capture electrical properties and other attributes of components, wires, nets and pins.
• Hierarchical way of design.
• Abilities to generate netlist
  Netlist
  The word netlist can be used in several different contexts, but perhaps the most popular is in the field of electronic design. In this context, a "netlist" describes the connectivity of an electronic design....
  
  s and other common representations of the designed circuit from schematic.
• The ability to generate documentation.
• Libraries of standard components.
• The ability to automatically detect and report errors in the schematic.
• the abilities to input designs from various formats, such as VHDL, Verilog
  Verilog
  In the semiconductor and electronic design industry, Verilog is a hardware description language used to model electronic systems. Verilog HDL, not to be confused with VHDL , is most commonly used in the design, verification, and implementation of digital logic chips at the register-transfer level...
  
  , EDIF
  EDIF
  EDIF is a vendor-neutral format in which to store Electronic netlists and schematics. It was one of the first attempts to establish a neutral data exchange format for the electronic design automation industry. The goal was to establish a common format from which the proprietary formats of the EDA...
  
  .

Availability

There are many schematic editors available, including commercial, freeware, shareware, and open source applications.

Name	URL	License	Environment	Reads	Writes	CAM	Limits
Eagle Eagle (program) EAGLE by Cadsoft is a flexible and expandable EDA schematic capture, PCB layout, autorouter and CAM program widely used since 1988.- Schematic capture :...	http://www.cadsoft.de/	Freeware Trial	Linux, Mac, Windows	Eagle	Eagle	Gerber, Excellon, Sieb&Meyer	16 layers, 64 x 64 inches (trial limited to 2 and 4 x 3.2 inches)
FreePCB FreePCB FreePCB is a printed circuit board design program for Microsoft Windows. It allows for up to 16 copper layers, both metric and English units, and export of designs in RS-274X Gerber format...	http://www.freepcb.com/	GNU	Windows	PADS-PCB Netlists	PADS-PCB Netlists	Gerber RS274X	16 layers, 60 x 60 inches
gEDA GEDA The term gEDA refers to two things:# A set of software applications used for electronic design released under the GPL. As such, gEDA is an ECAD or EDA application suite. gEDA is mostly oriented towards printed circuit board design...	http://www.gpleda.org/	GPL	Linux			Gerber RS274X
Kicad Kicad KiCad is an open source software suite for electronic design automation . It facilitates the design of schematics for electronic circuits and their conversion to PCBs design. KiCad was developed by Jean-Pierre Charras, and features an integrated environment for schematic capture and PCB layout...	http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/	GPL	Linux, Windows
Osmond PCB	http://www.osmondpcb.com/	Freeware Trial	Mac	Gerber	Lue, DXF, PDF	DXF, PostScript	(trial limited to 700 pins)
ZenitPCB Layout	http://www.zenitpcb.com/eng/PCB.html	Freeware	Windows	Gerber 274X	DXF, IDF, Eagle	DXF, IDF	800 pins