I've pretty much given up on KiCad. LibrePCB has a much easier UI, KiCad is essentially the Vim of PCBs.
Libre is already good enough in all ways except the fact you have to make a lot of parts yourself(Which is pretty fast, but still), for anything simple.
Anything it can't do, is probably a high budget kind of thing and you can afford the really good tools(But Libre might get there too, if it keeps going for another 5 years)
As soon as 6.0 was released we switched all future work to KiCad from Altium Designer. This after held licenses for AD going back to P-CAD days (2006, if I remember correctly) and previously using OrCAD and other professional tools. In short, I got sick and tired of sending thousands of dollars per year to Altium for them to burn the cash adding cloud-based functionality nobody I know wants at all. As a result, AD is just piled-on with bugs, issues, inconsistencies and you can pretty much expect every single update to deliver new bugs.
Anyhow, we've done several boards with KiCAD. We are not sorry at all that we made the change. Sure, it could be improved. The good news is, it will. Also, we are happy to financially contribute towards KiCad development because we know it will not go towards bullshit designed to try to sell the company to a larger company (Altium tried to attract Autodesk, and failed --ADSK probably saw the mess AD had become and backed away).
Anyhow, I think KiCad is good for probably 95%, if not 99%, of any board anyone might want to design. I go back to the early 80's for PCB design, which means that I have done some pretty advanced boards with tools that were far more primitive than KiCad.
As a side note, being able to use Python to drive aspects of KiCad is awesome. We've already created a number of useful utilities relevant to our work.
Kicad 6 feels a bit like a modernized version of Protel 99, with far less bugs too. So it is like Altium going back in time and choosing the correct development path instead of all the nonsense and disrespect for its users of the last two decades.
I have yet to meet anyone who was actually looking for a cloud-based EDA tool.
[EDIT: To clarify, what I am saying here is that, given all needs and desired features and functionality of EDA tools, I doubt anyone has been clamoring for a shift to the cloud because locally hosted software did not allow them to do the required work effectively.
For example: Had Altium devoted tens of millions of dollars towards the development of truly useful auto-routing, design tools and advanced library editing/maintenance tools this would have been a million times more valuable to every single one of their customers.]
I am sure there are use cases for this. However, the negatives, in my experience, by far outweigh the positives. We cannot have designs in the cloud. Period. We cannot subvert our PDM/PLM (Project Data Management/Project Lifecycle Management) to the whims of each software vendor.
Simple example: Today all of our PDM is handled through local directory structures where you can find and access design files for electrical, mechanical, optical, software and other engineering disciplines involved in product development. This also includes testing (for each of the above) and manufacturing (for each of the above). Now, multiply that by the equivalent to commits, release candidates, releases to manufacturing and product releases for, again, each of the above disciplines. Etc.
In short, physical hardware/software products are not distilled down to a single set of files. The idea of placing your EDA work on the cloud while everything else is stored and maintained in a local managed repository is nothing less than ludicrous. This is also the reason for which we use Solidworks instead of Fusion 360 (of which we own licenses but only use it in a very limited context).
The thought that a company like Altium would actually believe that non trivial companies would say "Oh, OK, we'll move all of our EDA work to the cloud now" is nothing less than ignorant. The circuit board is just one element of a product, and, sometimes a very minor part.
the nonsense and disrespect for its users of the last two decades.
Exactly. For the reasons I listed above and more.
Once you get to the point where the thousands of dollars you send a software vendor every year are being used for crap that is utterly useless and irrelevant to you (and, I argue, the majority of users) it's time to move on. They don't get it. And I hope they pay for it with a massive loss of revenue. KiCad is actually at the point where most open minded professionals would have no problems at all. Sure, the GUI is kind of "retro" and it might not be as visually refined as other tools. Who the "*ck" cares? Seriously. It gets the job done. That's all that matters.
I almost can't think of a type of board you cannot do with KiCad. I would suggest you try it with a hobby project or two and go from there. Version 6 made important improvements to the file format and other areas. This is what we were waiting for. I wouldn't have touched it before 6.0.
Watch this and see what portions of it align with the kind of work you do:
Also, like I said in my prior comment, Python scripting turns KiCad into a very powerful tool. A loot of these videos are outdated (prior versions). The point is to illustrate the range of ideas that can be covered using Python.
I have to say KiCad 6 is much nicer, since Pcbnew and Eeschema finally have the same UI. Having made a lot of mistakes on my first "big" design, resulting in multiple redraws, I actually find KiCad quite usable.
LibrePCB sadly doesn't have hierarhical schematics, and they've saved me a lot of time and effort. I hear Horizon EDA now has them, though, I'll have to try it.
Not having hierarchical schematics is a deal breaker for me. It saves so much time in SCH capture, and especially in layout where you can duplicate layouts of identical circuit blocks.
I do find some of the routing actions in PCBnew to be a bit buggy in v6. Weird selections, and a lot of adding short trace segments where none seem to be necessary.
I also don't like having to give up the PCB and SCH diff tools that emerged around the v5 file format ecosystem. Those make working collaboratively in Kicad a breeze.
If I could wave a wand and change one thing about kicad, it would be support for parts databases. Having database managed component libraries with sourcing information stored in the db makes a ton of stuff about designing electronics easier.
I recently did my first KiCad project and found it to be quite cool. Most of my previous experience was 10+ years ago with Orcad and whatever free EDA tools were around then, so I'm not up to date regarding KiCad's competition but I didn't find much to complain about. The issues I had were quickly resolved with a rich assortment of how-to videos and tutorials.
I had to make a part using KiCad as well, and even that process was straightforward. I'm excited to work on my next layout project now after having used it. Bonus points for the 3D rendering mode which worked spectacularly on Ubuntu out of the box. It was very handy to visualize the finished board before assembly.
Kicad is a huge breath of fresh air coming from Orcad. The ease of hierarchical designs and the 3D rendering were mindblowingly cool to have after a decade of designing boards without them.
Fellow Orcad user for almost a decade; was absolutely thrilled to move to kicad.
I'm tempted to give it a try. I've been using ExpressPCB at work, and something called FreePCB at home. The boards that I make at home tend to be simple 2-layer analog circuits.
I tried KiCad, and it seems like just getting to the starting point of beginning to route a PCB requires an enormous amount of sheer physical labor that left me with an eyestrain headache.
I'm glad we've got engineers to do this work, but I also kind of pity them, and have gained a better understanding of why projects take so long. I get it that at the end of the day, they need to be able to push a button and have a finished PCB stuffed with parts drop out of an automated machine in China. But I don't, and I think that for folks like hobbyists and hackers, going directly from a hand drawn schematic to manual layout in a simple PCB editor may still be the winning ticket.
Yeah, KiCad is a fucking hurdle. ExpressPCB was so much easier. With KiCad you really have to do things in s specific order (beginning with the schematic). Trying to "wing it" in KiCad is a doomed path.
I forced myself though to use/learn KiCad for a keyboard project. Worked. I've done another 3 or 4 new PCBs since and each one gets easier (no surprise).
The new one (ExpressPCB Plus) is much nicer. At my workplace, being tied to their service is not a problem for me. I'm doing R&D, and need to spin up simple boards quickly, sometimes for no reason other than wanting to "break out" an IC with good enough layout so I can test its performance in a tame environment. Anything I make that threatens to go into a product gets handed over to the real engineers, who have full blown commercial tools.
And it's like the difference between programming and software development -- the latter involves a lot more moving parts and needs more sophisticated tools to manage all of them.
At home, I like to order simple boards from lower cost suppliers, so I've been using FreePCB, and that's what I'm mainly interested in upgrading.
I don't think making your own parts is really a downside... For any commercial application actually making the part footprints is such a small part of the total engineering effort required for supply chain management. On top of that, it is important to really understand every pin!
What drew me to Horizon EDA was that it has interactive router (based on code from KiCad) with push and shove functions. It also has straightforward interface, and it's fast. Recently ODB++ support was added, probably the first (and only?) for open source EDA.
I wish it had ready to use footprints (other than basic resistors, caps, etc), especially from LCSC catalogue.
Comments
I've pretty much given up on KiCad. LibrePCB has a much easier UI, KiCad is essentially the Vim of PCBs.
Libre is already good enough in all ways except the fact you have to make a lot of parts yourself(Which is pretty fast, but still), for anything simple.
Anything it can't do, is probably a high budget kind of thing and you can afford the really good tools(But Libre might get there too, if it keeps going for another 5 years)
I wonder if you have used 6.x?
As soon as 6.0 was released we switched all future work to KiCad from Altium Designer. This after held licenses for AD going back to P-CAD days (2006, if I remember correctly) and previously using OrCAD and other professional tools. In short, I got sick and tired of sending thousands of dollars per year to Altium for them to burn the cash adding cloud-based functionality nobody I know wants at all. As a result, AD is just piled-on with bugs, issues, inconsistencies and you can pretty much expect every single update to deliver new bugs.
Anyhow, we've done several boards with KiCAD. We are not sorry at all that we made the change. Sure, it could be improved. The good news is, it will. Also, we are happy to financially contribute towards KiCad development because we know it will not go towards bullshit designed to try to sell the company to a larger company (Altium tried to attract Autodesk, and failed --ADSK probably saw the mess AD had become and backed away).
Anyhow, I think KiCad is good for probably 95%, if not 99%, of any board anyone might want to design. I go back to the early 80's for PCB design, which means that I have done some pretty advanced boards with tools that were far more primitive than KiCad.
As a side note, being able to use Python to drive aspects of KiCad is awesome. We've already created a number of useful utilities relevant to our work.
My experience exactly.
Kicad 6 feels a bit like a modernized version of Protel 99, with far less bugs too. So it is like Altium going back in time and choosing the correct development path instead of all the nonsense and disrespect for its users of the last two decades.
I have yet to meet anyone who was actually looking for a cloud-based EDA tool.
[EDIT: To clarify, what I am saying here is that, given all needs and desired features and functionality of EDA tools, I doubt anyone has been clamoring for a shift to the cloud because locally hosted software did not allow them to do the required work effectively.
For example: Had Altium devoted tens of millions of dollars towards the development of truly useful auto-routing, design tools and advanced library editing/maintenance tools this would have been a million times more valuable to every single one of their customers.]
I am sure there are use cases for this. However, the negatives, in my experience, by far outweigh the positives. We cannot have designs in the cloud. Period. We cannot subvert our PDM/PLM (Project Data Management/Project Lifecycle Management) to the whims of each software vendor.
Simple example: Today all of our PDM is handled through local directory structures where you can find and access design files for electrical, mechanical, optical, software and other engineering disciplines involved in product development. This also includes testing (for each of the above) and manufacturing (for each of the above). Now, multiply that by the equivalent to commits, release candidates, releases to manufacturing and product releases for, again, each of the above disciplines. Etc.
In short, physical hardware/software products are not distilled down to a single set of files. The idea of placing your EDA work on the cloud while everything else is stored and maintained in a local managed repository is nothing less than ludicrous. This is also the reason for which we use Solidworks instead of Fusion 360 (of which we own licenses but only use it in a very limited context).
The thought that a company like Altium would actually believe that non trivial companies would say "Oh, OK, we'll move all of our EDA work to the cloud now" is nothing less than ignorant. The circuit board is just one element of a product, and, sometimes a very minor part.
Exactly. For the reasons I listed above and more.
Once you get to the point where the thousands of dollars you send a software vendor every year are being used for crap that is utterly useless and irrelevant to you (and, I argue, the majority of users) it's time to move on. They don't get it. And I hope they pay for it with a massive loss of revenue. KiCad is actually at the point where most open minded professionals would have no problems at all. Sure, the GUI is kind of "retro" and it might not be as visually refined as other tools. Who the "*ck" cares? Seriously. It gets the job done. That's all that matters.
We are also considering to move from Altium to KiCad. I am glad to hear some positiv experience.
I almost can't think of a type of board you cannot do with KiCad. I would suggest you try it with a hobby project or two and go from there. Version 6 made important improvements to the file format and other areas. This is what we were waiting for. I wouldn't have touched it before 6.0.
Watch this and see what portions of it align with the kind of work you do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7-8nUU6e3E
Also, like I said in my prior comment, Python scripting turns KiCad into a very powerful tool. A loot of these videos are outdated (prior versions). The point is to illustrate the range of ideas that can be covered using Python.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kicad+python
I have to say KiCad 6 is much nicer, since Pcbnew and Eeschema finally have the same UI. Having made a lot of mistakes on my first "big" design, resulting in multiple redraws, I actually find KiCad quite usable.
LibrePCB sadly doesn't have hierarhical schematics, and they've saved me a lot of time and effort. I hear Horizon EDA now has them, though, I'll have to try it.
Not having hierarchical schematics is a deal breaker for me. It saves so much time in SCH capture, and especially in layout where you can duplicate layouts of identical circuit blocks.
I do find some of the routing actions in PCBnew to be a bit buggy in v6. Weird selections, and a lot of adding short trace segments where none seem to be necessary.
I also don't like having to give up the PCB and SCH diff tools that emerged around the v5 file format ecosystem. Those make working collaboratively in Kicad a breeze.
If I could wave a wand and change one thing about kicad, it would be support for parts databases. Having database managed component libraries with sourcing information stored in the db makes a ton of stuff about designing electronics easier.
I recently did my first KiCad project and found it to be quite cool. Most of my previous experience was 10+ years ago with Orcad and whatever free EDA tools were around then, so I'm not up to date regarding KiCad's competition but I didn't find much to complain about. The issues I had were quickly resolved with a rich assortment of how-to videos and tutorials.
I had to make a part using KiCad as well, and even that process was straightforward. I'm excited to work on my next layout project now after having used it. Bonus points for the 3D rendering mode which worked spectacularly on Ubuntu out of the box. It was very handy to visualize the finished board before assembly.
Kicad is a huge breath of fresh air coming from Orcad. The ease of hierarchical designs and the 3D rendering were mindblowingly cool to have after a decade of designing boards without them.
Fellow Orcad user for almost a decade; was absolutely thrilled to move to kicad.
I'm tempted to give it a try. I've been using ExpressPCB at work, and something called FreePCB at home. The boards that I make at home tend to be simple 2-layer analog circuits.
I tried KiCad, and it seems like just getting to the starting point of beginning to route a PCB requires an enormous amount of sheer physical labor that left me with an eyestrain headache.
I'm glad we've got engineers to do this work, but I also kind of pity them, and have gained a better understanding of why projects take so long. I get it that at the end of the day, they need to be able to push a button and have a finished PCB stuffed with parts drop out of an automated machine in China. But I don't, and I think that for folks like hobbyists and hackers, going directly from a hand drawn schematic to manual layout in a simple PCB editor may still be the winning ticket.
Yeah, KiCad is a fucking hurdle. ExpressPCB was so much easier. With KiCad you really have to do things in s specific order (beginning with the schematic). Trying to "wing it" in KiCad is a doomed path.
I forced myself though to use/learn KiCad for a keyboard project. Worked. I've done another 3 or 4 new PCBs since and each one gets easier (no surprise).
Express is quite easy to grow out of. Well, the old one, I think the new one is based on something they bought.
The old one made it quite difficult to use anyone but their mfg service (obviously their business model).
The new one (ExpressPCB Plus) is much nicer. At my workplace, being tied to their service is not a problem for me. I'm doing R&D, and need to spin up simple boards quickly, sometimes for no reason other than wanting to "break out" an IC with good enough layout so I can test its performance in a tame environment. Anything I make that threatens to go into a product gets handed over to the real engineers, who have full blown commercial tools.
And it's like the difference between programming and software development -- the latter involves a lot more moving parts and needs more sophisticated tools to manage all of them.
At home, I like to order simple boards from lower cost suppliers, so I've been using FreePCB, and that's what I'm mainly interested in upgrading.
In ease of use KiCad seems to be on par with pads, orcad, altium, etc. Not all that different. It just lacks a lot of features.
I don't think making your own parts is really a downside... For any commercial application actually making the part footprints is such a small part of the total engineering effort required for supply chain management. On top of that, it is important to really understand every pin!
I use Horizon EDA and it's really nice.
What drew me to Horizon EDA was that it has interactive router (based on code from KiCad) with push and shove functions. It also has straightforward interface, and it's fast. Recently ODB++ support was added, probably the first (and only?) for open source EDA.
I wish it had ready to use footprints (other than basic resistors, caps, etc), especially from LCSC catalogue.
Me too. Much much much better than KiCAD which is quite unusable IMO and the devs were actively hostile to UX improvements.
I haven't tried LibrePCB though.