kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Tim Hutt <tdhutt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I've been looking for a good free EDA software for ages, and currently use
Designspark PCB, which is freeware but not open source (although the only
limitation is an unobtrusive RS splash advert on startup). It is ok though
- and orders of magnitude better than Eagle. I tried gEDA years ago and it
was worthless.

Anyway, I've been following CERN's work on Kicad, and thought I'd give
Kicad a try. These sorts of programs always seem to fail on basic usability
things (like how to copy/paste) so I recorded my first ever Kicad session!
Hopefully it will be valuable so you can see what new users thing when
trying Kicad (assuming you care).

It's 30 mins. Somewhat low quality youtube (it downscaled 1024p to 720p
stupidly):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k93cSNXEFUk

Original (better quality):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jymyxaoe1mg98qh/Kicad_Newbie_Part_One.mp4?dl=0

I hope I don't seem too critical in the video. Although Kicad did have some
of the same crazy usability issues that seem to plague all EDA apps (failed
the copy/paste test!), it did seem fairly clean and non-buggy and fixing
the usability issues is probably not too hard (/me tentatively raises
volunteering hand).

What do you guys think?

Cheers,

Tim

PS: Kicad-winbuilder is awesome. Well done whoever is responsible for that!