kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 09:33:52PM +0100, Tim Hutt wrote:
> They're not *that* different. I'd say it's more like using Solidworks if
> you've only used Pro/E. The basics are identical:

> 1. Create component footprint.
> 2. Create component symbol.
> 3. Join them together into a component.
> 4. Repeat for all components.

However just the component library architecture is vastly different from
one package to another. And many details often don't translate between
packages due to architectural differences. Like, kicad has component
libraries and footprint libraries while eagle only as one kind of
library taking both of them. In the meantime IIRC Orcad has 'technology
templates' which neither of the other two has. Zuken has a whole
different component kind for starpoints, kicad has them as an hack,
orcad really I don't know:P

You really can't *explore* these clicking around.

> 5. Place components into schematic and connect them via nets.
> 6. Translate schematic into PCB.

Forward/backward annotation? Automatic annotation? Shared data
structure? tell me how can someone 'intuit' the difference in these
different models?

> 7. Manually or automatically route traces.

... and maybe fight with the SPECCTRA interfaces :P

> 8. Export gerbers.

I think that gerber generation is the more similar step in all the CAD
I've seen around :D

> I think you're thinking of "Tip of the day", in which case you are
> absolutely right - *nobody* reads them! But people read context-sensitive
> popup hints. Every time I've seen one (which isn't often) they've been
> helpful.

Well, if you mean something like "Remember to configure the stackup and
DRC before routing the board" just after importing the netlist for the
first time, these would be useful. But some kind of tutorial (and some
kind of contextual help, like one page for dialog) would be way better.

If you have seen zuken tutorial, they go one chapter at a time with
different starting point (and premade files for the chapter starts).
They do something really simple (IIRC a BJT astable blinker)
with one file with the empty preconfigured board, one other with the
imported packages, one placed but not routed and one routed ready to
export. Then you have chapter 1 with a step-by-step package import (and
libraries premade for the tutorial), chapter 2 explaining how to place
and so on... each chapter tell how to go from one board to the following
one.

Workflow in EDA is *very* important IMHO (in fact every manual usually
starts with a diagram of the data flow between modules); another thing
are the common techniques to be used... in spreadsheet you often see
people doing sums like =A1+A2+A3+A4 instead of =SUM(A1;A4)... and these
are advanced users, common ones don't know what formulas are and do the
sum by hand writing the result in the result cell :D in the same way
when drawing a 10 cm line in pcbnew you could either a) count the dots on the
grid (I've seen that...) or b) press space and move away looking on the
status line.

I think that's the best way to teach a tool like kicad (where the
workflow is *relatively* fixed... backannotating and doing a pinswap
would be advanced techniques:D)

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl