KiCad 5.1.0 | Hacker News Reader

KiCad 5.1.0

kicad-pcb.org

131 pointsokket35 comments

For those unfamiliar with KiCad and electronics, it is an electronics design tool. You need a tool like that to design PCBs (printed circuit boards) where components are later placed to build devices.

For those familiar with electronics, but eyeing KiCad from a distance, it is a very capable tool which can be used to produce moderately complex designs. I have personally designed 4-layer boards with impedance-controlled differential pairs with it. While you might not want to use it to design a PC motherboard, well, let's just say that we don't all design PC motherboards.

The upcoming KiCad conference (https://kicad-kicon.com/) looks very interesting (my company, PartsBox https://partsbox.io/ is a sponsor) and the future for KiCad looks bright :-)

What would you use to design a motherboard? Eagle?

Altium, Cadence, Allegro, orcad, etc

If people are interested in KiCad, we're having a conference for/about it at the end of April: https://kicad-kicon.com/

Lots of talks and opportunities to learn layout if you don't already know it.

And if you don't recognize this man's name, take a look at his many youtube videos on using kicad and other electronics topics. [1] He also runs courses on all of this stuff too [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkJRycUz2CylxpiP-zMePow

[2] https://contextualelectronics.com/

And he runs the electronics podcast "The Amp Hour" [1] with Dave Jones from the EEVBlog [2].

[1] https://theamphour.com/

[2] http://eevblog.com/

Thanks for the shout!

Picked up KiCad over the summer and I'm really glad I did. Bums me out so much when I see OSH projects using Eagle :(

Eagle is in a weird place right now. For years it was functionally quite good, but horribly outdated UI-wise. I learned PCB design using Eagle, and will still go to Eagle first because I know I can knock out a breakout board in half an hour. But, the user interface was like something from Windows 95.

Then Autodesk got involved and everyone flipped their tables. On the whole, I think it's been a good move. Cadsoft let Eagle stagnate. Autodesk have already implemented a lot of really useful features - why did it take so long to add layer groups (like top/bottom sets)? Or board previews? Or push/shove routing? Real-time DRC violation alerts? On the other hand, the UI changes slightly every time there's a (frequent) update which takes getting used to. They're very active on the Autodesk forums and they seem genuinely interested in making it a more usable piece of software.

I think it still needs a year or two for the dust to settle, but I still enjoy using it. I'm fortunate that I have a license as university staff, but the free version has always been pretty nice (I don't think I've ever needed a board bigger than 100x160).

Part of Eagle's popularity stems (I guess) from SparkFun and Adafruit using it, historically, for a lot of their tutorials.

> Bums me out so much when I see OSH projects using Eagle

Can not agree more. There are multiple alternatives for open source EDA packages. I started using gEDA before the KiCad project even existed, so I mostly still work in gEDA. But I have done work in KiCad, it is probably more beginner-friendly than gEDA but I always seem to bump into things I miss from gEDA when doing a KiCad project.

In any case, with two mature (and I have heard other newer projects exist???) open source EDA packages available, it is frustrating to see open hardware projects still using proprietary cripple-ware.

> and I have heard other newer projects exist???

Yeah, know of librepcb [1] and horizon [2]. Both try to solve kicad's library problems. Librepcb files are designed with version control in mind, which I like. Horizon used parts of kicad (like autorouter) and is more feature rich.

I probably would have switched to kicad by now, but these new projects seem nice, too, and I decided to wait and see where the community settles. Hence, in my case, variety in open source hurts adoption.

[1] https://librepcb.org/

[2] https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon

Could you elaborate what Kicad's library problems are?

I've never done serious work in it but the current way of managing libraries is quite confusing and (I imagine) difficult to use version control will

Eagle is straight-up weird. It’s like using a DOS program in 1985, when developers were experimenting with UI.

To copy and paste from one design to another: group command, select components, cut command (it will copy them, not cut them), close the file, open another file (only one file can be open at a time), paste command.

Eagle was a great start, but once Autodesk started up with the licensing crap, I moved to KiCad, which although took a bit of time, was well worth the effort!

Thanks to the Kicad team. Looking forward to designing my next pcb with it.

I used it several years back to design some simple industrial boards. Good to see the project is kicking along well!

If your reference is "several years back", I can assure you there are many many improvements :). Push-and-shove routing and hw-accelerated display are just two.

KiCad is rapidly becoming truly good; I strongly suggest anyone interested to give it a try. It isn't OrCad or Altium, but it's now very compelling, and it is already better than Eagle.

For my hobbyist needs, KiCAD has far more features than I'll ever need. I love it and recommend that anyone with an interest pick up hardware design, I find it very fulfilling.

KiCAD could be improved in some areas (mainly parts management), but AFAIK every other equally capable EDA is the same or worse, so I can't complain.

How long until it is on par with Altium?

We got a long way to go. But at the same time it's about what you want to do for your workflow. Altium can do everything under the sun which most people don't need at all.

Altium also costs $13k/year per seat!!

Well, yes, for the full feature version. There is also a $500 version that doesn't have some of the higher-end features.

As someone who bought a license to Circuit Studio (the $500 version), I can't recommend it. Missing some of the higher-end features is being polite; while there is no agreement on what is high-end, I found that many general-use features from Designer were carelessly stripped out or left in a broken state. Then, of course, are the bugs and Altium's refusal to share a product roadmap for CS. Despite not communicating what they want to improve about the product, and when they plan to deliver it, they still want a subscription fee.

It's 100% worth it for the support alone. Not to mention the workflow and features.

If $13k/year makes my design take half the time and cuts my chances of a fatal error in $26k of boards in half, I'll buy it every time.

Just had a go at it, and compared with 5.0.1, there are many improvements. To name a few: much quicker rendering when moving things in schematic view, and being able (without hand-editing files) to place things on eg Fab and Courtyard layers when creating a footprint.

Actually scanned through the two lists of bugs fixed (for RC and for release), ca 500+10, and damn have the team been productive!

Thanks!

Tried KiCad out some time back and it piqued my interest. Can you drag elements around now with some basic auto-routing to maintain connections?

(IIRC the I think devs were putting some work into improving this?)

Any plans for an Alpine distribution?

Linux builds are up to distros to build and package (or do it yourself). We don't have the manpower to cover the 100+ distros under the sun due to Linux NIH syndrome. As long as alpine basically supports a full desktop environment using wxWidgets, it should build and run just fine.

Out of curiosity why would they create a distribution for Alpine? At least in practical use I don't know of anyone who uses it as a desktop OS like other distributions. I don't know of any features of KiCad that make sense when you don't have a solid UI (I also imagine that most users of alpine are sufficiently advanced to just compile it themselves if the rest of the dependencies are there).

> At least in practical use I don't know of anyone who uses it as a desktop OS like other distributions.

There's a small but burgeoning number of us :)

It really isn't up to the KiCad folks to package it up though -- that should come from the Alpine side of the community.

It's good to know the distribution has gotten to that point, I'll have to give it a shot.

The Arch Linux PKGBUILD (https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=kicad...) doesn't look too complex, you could try building from source. Neither `opencascade` or `ngspice` look like they're packaged for Alpine, so you'd have to build those from source first. I don't know how complex that would be. Off the top of my head the rest of the dependencies are already in the alpine package repos. Building from source isn't as hard as it's reputation. Most of the time it's just a `autoconf -i && ./configure && make && sudo make install` tbh. Just do a cursory read of the README, and `./configure --help` first.

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