kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Torsten Hüter" <torstenhtr@...>]

Hi Dick,

> OK, thanks. I will write a summary in a future email.
> 
> Just curious, what is it about Kicad that would cause you to use it even 
> though you have the other packages available to you?
> 
> Is Kicad in anyway superior, or inferior? And when you say "medium 
> board", what does this mean to you?

I had access to these EDA packages at my former work and during my diploma thesis. Now I'm part of a small start-up, sure I've done some research to find a good tool; Mentor Expedition is the best router that I've used - but I believe the version that I've used starts at $30000 - too expensive for us. Altium would be in our price range; but I'm missing push & shove of components.
Currently for smaller boards (we develop wireless sensor boards) I think KiCad is not bad; with the combination of Freerouter. Without Freerouter I'd not choose KiCad - the push & shove is very important for me. I think KiCad can almost compete with Eagle - but surely some details have to be done.
For big boards I don't know if KiCad is a good choice - because it's missing very impotant features like High Speed Routing, impedance controlled routing, bus routing etc. etc. Also Freerouter seems to be relative slow for bigger boards. However I'm sure, if you're designing such stuff, the investment of a professional router isn't a big problem.

Still I think KiCad is on a good way, currently it's already the best open-source EDA tool in my opinion. Also interesting for me, because I've direct access of the source code.

Bye ..
Torsten
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