Reading the forums today I stumbled across people talking about diode matrices in reference to 7 segment displays. Are there generators for these sorts of things? i.e. If I wanted 3, 7 digit decimal displays, program could output diode topology in matrix form for various number of inputs?

A good answer would probably be to tell me to design one myself. But curious if such a program I'm thinking of actually already exists.

 

I assume you mean three digits, each of which is a 7-segment display.

You can likely find a diode matrix already drawn out for that, but it will be complex. I am not aware of any software that does that for you, but it may exist. Exactly what you need depends upon how you want to operate it. Maybe if you describe what you want to do, someone here can provide better answers.

 

Nope, they don't exist or you would have found one when you searched on Google. Diode matrices became less then useful long before the PC became a dominant force in design work. The first circuit I ever built was a diode matrix, and I'm just about as old as dirt itself.

A diode matrix works best to convert 1 out of N signals to some multiple outputs.

Huh? That's the fancy way of saying if you had 10 buttons labeled 1 to 10 you could make a diode matrix to run a 7-segment display.

But if you push two buttons it would display gibberish. And for 3 digits you need 30 buttons.