kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/18/2013 12:11 PM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 11:25:16AM -0600, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>> I find KiCad barely useable.  I am in no way satisfied with KiCad.  In my view it is
>> however making progress, although more like 3 steps forward and 1 step back.
> 
> I do not agree with that. It's *far* from perfect, but beats every low
> cost EDA package I've ever tried. 


I am jealous.  I wish I could be happier with KiCad, it would enable me to get more boards
produced, and spend less time fixing usability concerns.  But unfortunately for me, and
heretofore fortunately for the project, that is not the case.


My basis of comparison would not tend to use low cost EDA packages as a baseline however,
but rather "what do I expect from code that I might write?".   Starting there, and
factoring in the reality of insufficient free time....

we end up with a logically supported difference of opinion.

It's good however to hear that some folks are happy with KiCad....


Dick


> YMMV, depending on the kind of board
> you're doing (good luck with an heavily impedance controlled layout or
> modern things like via-on-pad). I recently did an UHF design (RFID
> stuff), not exactly the easiest thing but with care (and *a lot* of
> review) everything worked out.
> 
> At the present time I'd say it's like autocad without any domain
> specific addon, i.e. almost anything can be done but not a lot easily
> and quickly.
> 
> ATM the thing still I mostly miss are inter-class design rules (i.e.
> having 220VAC and 5VDC on the same board). Need a lot of time to verify
> and recheck. Failures in safety certification tend to be expensive:(
> 
> Also a better 'drag trace' would be even more useful for me than the P&S
> router. Maybe it's a workflow issue of mine, I don't know...
> 
> The 1 step back you are mentioning is probably due to the constant
> changing evolution (for example I really don't like the new opengl view
> but that's probably because it's still little more than a proof of
> concept). Also probably something broke in the change module due to the
> new footprint library table. More testing (a lot more) is needed. Still
> I see asserts popping up sometimes when cancelling operations in pcbnew,
> for example.
>