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Comment by bobadams5 | Hacker News Reader

Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.

I've used Diptrace, KiCad, Altium, and Cadence Allegro and KiCad was by far the worst of these for handling parts.

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> Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.

It's pretty bad. Lots of quirks, I still haven't guessed the right incantations for it to notice libs you added, managing library paths is a mess, and you have to do most of that work for every project.

But then again, coming from EAGLE, I'm used to this stuff being incredibly crappy. I don't know — do other tools get this right?

I've used a couple of tool$ AKA commercial tools

Cadence Allegro PCB Designer is a right steaming pile. The whole issue with path's are a problem. You don't have libraries like you do in Altium or ancient ORCAD, you have directories of files that define pads and parts.

Lately poking about with Altium. I think it's fairly good.

I still have a copy of the old ORCAD circa late nineties, was 'okay' Or put it this way, needed to layout a PCB in 2005 and tried Eagle and... dug out and installed ORCAD from 1998.

Altium does an amazing job with their integrated libraries. You create an integrated library, add a schematic library and a footprint library to it, and compile it like any other design project. You can also use supplier search to import part parameters from distributors.

I believe so, yes, though the degree to which this is true depends on whether or not you were using the beta at the time. The latest KiCad stable is worth a look if you haven't tried it in a while

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