gnetlist takes one or more schematic files as input, and outputs the result of processing them to generate a netlist.

Schematic files contain components, which may represent subcircuits to be included in the design, or or discrete parts or devices to be used. Components have pins associated with them, which represent either a physical pin on an electronic component, or a logical connection to a subcircuit schematic. Components are connected up by joining their pins with nets or buses. All of these elements can have attributes associated with them, which control how they are interpreted by gnetlist.

You can list any number of schematic files as input. They will be merged together to form a single netlist. This allows you to split your circuit into several schematic diagrams, which can be useful if you have a very large and complicated design. List the schematic files on the command line, e.g.:

gnetlist power-supply.sch motor-drive.sch

If you have a schematic which has a filename beginning with a hyphen (”-”), you should add the special option -- after any options and before your list of input files. This will make sure that none of your filenames get misinterpreted as options. For example:

gnetlist -- -tricky-name.sch

By default, gnetlist writes the netlist it generates to a file called “output.net”. You can use the -o option to specify a different filename. For example, to output to a file called “stepper.bom”:

gnetlist -o stepper.bom