Effective June 7, 2026, Autodesk will no longer sell nor support EAGLE(autodesk.com)
autodesk.com
Effective June 7, 2026, Autodesk will no longer sell nor support EAGLE
https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-EAGLE-Announcement-Next-steps-and-FAQ.html
205 comments
I learned PCB design on Eagle, switched to Kicad about 5 years ago, and in the last three years have really been doing a LOT of PCB design with Kicad. I love it so much!
Here's a dense four layer brushless motor control board I designed recently, which can be viewed online in the amazing Kicanvas viewer:
https://kicanvas.org/?github=https://github.com/Twisted-Fiel...
Here's a dense four layer brushless motor control board I designed recently, which can be viewed online in the amazing Kicanvas viewer:
https://kicanvas.org/?github=https://github.com/Twisted-Fiel...
This is me too. My first projects were in Eagle, primarily because it was the de facto standard for EDA for hobbyists for a while. KiCAD used to be awful and very challenging.
In the last several years, it’s really improved and I enjoy using it. If you haven’t picked it up in a while, give it a shot.
In the last several years, it’s really improved and I enjoy using it. If you haven’t picked it up in a while, give it a shot.
wow, kicanvas looks great for sharing designs, is the idea that you use github for versioning your kicad folder (probably better than my current lazy dropbox option) and then you can just share the designs with people?
that is a cool website.
can you share designs privately with team members? it looks great for collaborating if it's got authentication.
that is a cool website.
can you share designs privately with team members? it looks great for collaborating if it's got authentication.
These are great questions! I wonder how it works if you have a file which is private on GitHub but you’re logged in to GitHub and you’re able to view the file in your browser. Maybe kicanvas is sufficiently local to your machine that this would work.
Either way I know it is under active development so you could file a GitHub issue and ask about that! Link to the GitHub for it on the main page here:
https://kicanvas.org/
Either way I know it is under active development so you could file a GitHub issue and ask about that! Link to the GitHub for it on the main page here:
https://kicanvas.org/
Can users share the schematics also?
Perhaps I'm not looking in the right place, but I can't find the button for it.
Anyway, this looks great.
Perhaps I'm not looking in the right place, but I can't find the button for it.
Anyway, this looks great.
Seems like you need to change the URL to point at a schematic file:
https://kicanvas.org/?github=https://github.com/Twisted-Fiel...
https://kicanvas.org/?github=https://github.com/Twisted-Fiel...
Ditto (in that I learned Eagle and switched to KiCad a few years ago). KiCad is great! Way better than Eagle.
Nice to see you Taylor!
I'm really enjoying watching the progress on your motor controller!
I'm really enjoying watching the progress on your motor controller!
Aww yay thank you! After three months in development the new boards are almost done with assembly and I should see them next week!
Love everyone.
<3
<3
<3 and it’s supposed to come with a silkscreen heart but I found a bug in their viewer for pours on the silk layer heh
https://github.com/theacodes/kicanvas/issues/31
https://github.com/theacodes/kicanvas/issues/31
Agreed, although I'd say KiCad was pretty rough 4 years ago but it got good in 2021 with version 6. It used to be good enough for a saint, but now it's good enough for a whiny picky person such as myself.
> It used to be good enough for a saint, but now it's good enough for a whiny picky person such as myself.
I really like your description of patience in software. I think I'll borrow this for future things I want others to try.
I really like your description of patience in software. I think I'll borrow this for future things I want others to try.
I saw the writing on the wall for EagleCAD once they stopped releasing any kind of bug fixes despite charging subscription fees and started ignoring the forums other than triaging the complaints. It was clear they were going to do this and break EagleCAD to force people to use Fusion 360.
I don't use Windows, I don't want to, I've used Fusion 360 and it was slow as heck, didn't have constraint based solving that worked, was written in some awful system that made it require an internet connection, and they want me to use an EagleCAD-themed editor that they've hacked in?
I switched to using KiCAD for all new projects a year ago. It was a little bit of a learning curve. I started with designing a flexible heater PCB, which was good for a learning project because it had so few components. Now I'm making PCBs with four layers, inner ground and power planes, custom design rules, using fancy add-ons, taking full advantage of the HTML BOM plugin when teaching grad students how to solder, and I can be 100% sure that even if it gets worse I can still get the old version to work (probably).
Even the part library is more coherent and higher quality (!) than the EagleCAD one. I literally refused to use the built in EagleCAD libraries because the quality was so variable, sometimes it's fine, sometimes I ruin an entire PCB because their version of SO-8 had a weird width. KiCAD is way better, it's closer to OrCAD and lets me make the schematic, assign the footprints, and if I don't like a footprint I can just edit it on the fly for that document or to just save a new version of the footprint forever.
I've even got it set up to use Dropbox to share designs between computers (no issues) and that includes downloading STP 3D models and adding them to my footprints.
I know it's going to take me a while longer to be nearly as adept as I was at EagleCAD, and I'm going to miss that autorouter (the KiCAD one is very good for what it is, but it's a hard problem). There's a lot of keyboard shortcuts that you internalize after 20 years of using a program.
But it will be worth it, and frankly already is worth it. I've had to make like four custom footprints because the default library is just so well organized that I can actually find the one or maybe two versions of WSON-10 or whatever instead of having to guess which library has the version that matches my mechanical drawing.
I don't use Windows, I don't want to, I've used Fusion 360 and it was slow as heck, didn't have constraint based solving that worked, was written in some awful system that made it require an internet connection, and they want me to use an EagleCAD-themed editor that they've hacked in?
I switched to using KiCAD for all new projects a year ago. It was a little bit of a learning curve. I started with designing a flexible heater PCB, which was good for a learning project because it had so few components. Now I'm making PCBs with four layers, inner ground and power planes, custom design rules, using fancy add-ons, taking full advantage of the HTML BOM plugin when teaching grad students how to solder, and I can be 100% sure that even if it gets worse I can still get the old version to work (probably).
Even the part library is more coherent and higher quality (!) than the EagleCAD one. I literally refused to use the built in EagleCAD libraries because the quality was so variable, sometimes it's fine, sometimes I ruin an entire PCB because their version of SO-8 had a weird width. KiCAD is way better, it's closer to OrCAD and lets me make the schematic, assign the footprints, and if I don't like a footprint I can just edit it on the fly for that document or to just save a new version of the footprint forever.
I've even got it set up to use Dropbox to share designs between computers (no issues) and that includes downloading STP 3D models and adding them to my footprints.
I know it's going to take me a while longer to be nearly as adept as I was at EagleCAD, and I'm going to miss that autorouter (the KiCAD one is very good for what it is, but it's a hard problem). There's a lot of keyboard shortcuts that you internalize after 20 years of using a program.
But it will be worth it, and frankly already is worth it. I've had to make like four custom footprints because the default library is just so well organized that I can actually find the one or maybe two versions of WSON-10 or whatever instead of having to guess which library has the version that matches my mechanical drawing.
How do you go about doing the mechanical drawing for a footprint not found in the library? I tried to design a simple SD card board as a learning project. I gave up when the part that I selected was difficult to draw. I was not sure whether I was missing some information or is it my inexperience. My persistence on learning and eventual failure left me with the bad taste.
PS: The part I selected seemed to be a generic brand and did not get any info to clarify the dimensions.
PS: The part I selected seemed to be a generic brand and did not get any info to clarify the dimensions.
There is a footprint wizard, like EagleCAD had. That's usually where to start if it's at all possible.
I personally don't think I'm good enough at KiCAD to draw one from scratch. I could probably make it okay, but it wouldn't be professional quality. Life goal is to be able to meaningfully contribute to the project library globally, they have high standards.
I managed to draw a USB port that was probably the trickiest one I had to do. It was really the same as eagle, I had to place pads, give them proper numbers, define through holes (it let me do slots, even with an offset which was way better than Eagle), and then it just let me connect it to a USB-C symbol in my schematic no questions asked.
But making a custom symbol was also the same as Eagle. Same process, label pins, define directions, place labels...
The only difference maybe is that footprints and symbols aren't forcibly associated, and connections are done via the pin/pad numbers.
With a datasheet of that low of quality you're better off measuring by hand though, I don't know a way around that one.
I personally don't think I'm good enough at KiCAD to draw one from scratch. I could probably make it okay, but it wouldn't be professional quality. Life goal is to be able to meaningfully contribute to the project library globally, they have high standards.
I managed to draw a USB port that was probably the trickiest one I had to do. It was really the same as eagle, I had to place pads, give them proper numbers, define through holes (it let me do slots, even with an offset which was way better than Eagle), and then it just let me connect it to a USB-C symbol in my schematic no questions asked.
But making a custom symbol was also the same as Eagle. Same process, label pins, define directions, place labels...
The only difference maybe is that footprints and symbols aren't forcibly associated, and connections are done via the pin/pad numbers.
With a datasheet of that low of quality you're better off measuring by hand though, I don't know a way around that one.
The biggest problem for me in doing custom symbols is the measurements and the subsequent drawing. My life goal is as yours, manage to create a custom symbol and also build my own custom dev board. Unfortunately many things got in the way and the work kept delaying for almost 9-10 years now.
The reason I picked a particular SD card was because it was low cost. My country has crazy import fees and because of this I am forced to select low cost parts which usually have bad datasheet and documentation.
The reason I picked a particular SD card was because it was low cost. My country has crazy import fees and because of this I am forced to select low cost parts which usually have bad datasheet and documentation.
There's also an amazing KiBot ([1]) that enables a lot of automation without much effort to setup.
1. https://github.com/INTI-CMNB/KiBot
1. https://github.com/INTI-CMNB/KiBot
Yes, KiBot is awesome. Just yesterday I saw that I can panelize my PCBs in my CI pipline!
https://sschueller.github.io/posts/ci-cd-with-kicad-and-gitl...
https://sschueller.github.io/posts/ci-cd-with-kicad-and-gitl...
KiCad continues to improve, and that plain text file thing is a killer feature. Also in the new version they added the capability to have library databases for components which is a massive step towards professional libraries.
If they could bring in better signal integrity tools and Altiums outjobs, it would be a no brainer to use KiCad for hobbyist to small business applications.
If they could bring in better signal integrity tools and Altiums outjobs, it would be a no brainer to use KiCad for hobbyist to small business applications.
KiCad is sorely lacking facilities for analyzing trace impedance and power plane capacity - very simple features and all of the building parts (mainly the board stackup information) are already there.
I've wanted to add this stuff (and hopefully push upstream), but haven't been able to find the time.
These are basically table stakes in every commercial offering.
I've wanted to add this stuff (and hopefully push upstream), but haven't been able to find the time.
These are basically table stakes in every commercial offering.
Yes but these are not showstoppers. You can do a lot with scripting in Python (and e.g. Shapely for geometrical processing) and you can even find other user's scripts online. Of course, it would be nice if e.g. computing the length of a trace was as simple as a mouse click (perhaps it is in the newest version), but this is certainly no reason for many to switch to a closed, expensive, commercial tool.
> computing the length of a trace was as simple as a mouse click
Combined with a keybind (6 or 7 or 8 - one of the tuning binds), getting the length of a trace is about 1-2 clicks.
Combined with a keybind (6 or 7 or 8 - one of the tuning binds), getting the length of a trace is about 1-2 clicks.
We switched from Altium to kicad and it was a good decision. However, we weren’t really successful to port projects from Altium to kicad. So, we still need a Altiun license. I am sure there are features in Altium that kicad is missing, but for our application - power electronics- we haven’t missed anything so far.
Did you use Altium BOM tools? I found them to be incredible, does KiCAD have something similar to handle BOM generation via something like octopart?
I miss that, it made my BOMs so much more trustworthy.
We did not use BOM generator via octopart in Altium. What we do now: We have our own kicad library which is mostly derived from the official kicad libary + some custom parts etc. We have all the information added to this library including Manfucaturer, MPN, datasheets etc. and from there we generate our BOM. There might be a more efficient way to do it, but we did something similar in Altium. So maybe we could have done better there too.
That seems reasonable. I found the digikey list bom export tool the other day and it looked awfully close but it was using the value for the part number because that's where I usually put them (with real values for passives). So it did pretty well for my special ICs but then had a bunch of like "10k" part names.
But okay, I have ten different resistor values but they're all the same symbol and package. Is there a field you know of where I could put a list of validated part number options for a given refdes? It sounds tedious but if it were connected with a search engine it would be no worse than altium.
But okay, I have ten different resistor values but they're all the same symbol and package. Is there a field you know of where I could put a list of validated part number options for a given refdes? It sounds tedious but if it were connected with a search engine it would be no worse than altium.
This. Kicad is not perfect, but it gets the job done and is great for Git.
Perhaps now, Kicad devs can get even more support to make it better.
Perhaps now, Kicad devs can get even more support to make it better.
> the plain text representation of project state
If it would weigh anything, this alone would be worth its weight in gold.
If it would weigh anything, this alone would be worth its weight in gold.
How's Kicad's autoroute these days? For anyone who says "no Pro uses autoroute" I can say electronics is a hobby for me and when I'm designing a PCB I like to autoroute first, see all the issues, then go back, move my components, autoroute again, once I arrive at optimal placement I do maybe 10% of traces manually (these are the ones autorouter does weird stuff with) then I let autoroute deal with remaining 90% of repetitive stuff. Finally I just tweak few things here and there. I think I tried kicad few years ago and I was back to altium very quickly. For typical hobby use one can't really afford altium so kicad is the only way to go, but if you can have it I'd choose altium every time.
[1] There are options, but honestly I never seen the point for small boards. There just seem to be rarely the case where setup and fiddling with settings is all that faster than just routing few dozen traces.
I guess if I wanted to route something like big keyboard with a bunch of leds, but overall routing PCB is just such small overall part of the project that I just play some podcast in the background and play the PCB puzzle/sudoku challenge.
But then I like going back and forth and even changing schematic a bit to make routing nicer.
- [1] https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/kicad-autorouting-made-easy/
I guess if I wanted to route something like big keyboard with a bunch of leds, but overall routing PCB is just such small overall part of the project that I just play some podcast in the background and play the PCB puzzle/sudoku challenge.
But then I like going back and forth and even changing schematic a bit to make routing nicer.
- [1] https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/kicad-autorouting-made-easy/
Ah, that java plugin.... I might give it a go this time. Last time I saw the word java and I decided against it.I believe I did test this plugin years ago when it came out first, back then it really was quite useless. As you said, it required fiddling with a ton of settings that meant just doing the damn thing by hand was quicker.
I would love to be able to do pcb design on my main Linux desktop rather than having to fish an old windows 7 work laptop with a copy of altium.
However, let me tell you my altium work flow with autoroute and small boards. Recently For example I was designing a Qfn44(7*7mm) to dip 44 adapter board. As simple as it gets really.
After drawing my rectangle board setting the only chip in the middle and two rows of pins.I just let the autoroute do it's job on default settings(it already has my minimum trace distance and thickness set) , I rip it all down, tweak few settings(trace neckdowns near pads), run it again. Repeat once more and the board is done all in under 5 minutes.
I would love to be able to do pcb design on my main Linux desktop rather than having to fish an old windows 7 work laptop with a copy of altium.
However, let me tell you my altium work flow with autoroute and small boards. Recently For example I was designing a Qfn44(7*7mm) to dip 44 adapter board. As simple as it gets really.
After drawing my rectangle board setting the only chip in the middle and two rows of pins.I just let the autoroute do it's job on default settings(it already has my minimum trace distance and thickness set) , I rip it all down, tweak few settings(trace neckdowns near pads), run it again. Repeat once more and the board is done all in under 5 minutes.
Right but making adpater like that is like 10 minutes of manual routing max
There is now basic autoroute capability that works on a selection of traces. There is still no whole-board autoroute, and although in theory you could just select all items in the board and hit autoroute, it is not functionally designed to work this way.
[deleted]
Have you had to handle conversions at all? I have a project stuck in Altium I'd rather not pay to continue developing.
No, but as a former altium user who was burned by altium, if you aren't working on a team with multiple users, it is well worth the pain to get rid of altium. There are some muscle memory things you might have frustrations with the first few weeks, but it has been smooth sailing after the transition period.
My only complaint with KiCad is their library/BOM management is a bit clunky, but the fact you can automate things so much easier vs altium more than makes up for it.
My only complaint with KiCad is their library/BOM management is a bit clunky, but the fact you can automate things so much easier vs altium more than makes up for it.
I've at this point needed to convert projects between Eagle, KiCAD, OrCAD, and a few others.
I've seen Altium do decent at open EagleCAD. I've seen KiCAD do much better at opening EagleCAD. I assume KiCAD and EagleCAD work decently well with one another's file formats due to both being text based and documented.
That said, no matter how much someone paid for the software being converted from or to, I've yet to see a project that wasn't better served by starting from scratch and reproducing the design. Each tool just has a somewhat different paradigm (or default grid spacing or whatever) and like... EagleCAD symbols imported into Altium work they just suck. For example.
I've been dealing with this mess for a while. My colleague has decades worth of PCB designs trapped in OrCAD pre-cadence. I've been pushing him to EagleCAD, and have been pushing myself towards KiCAD for over a year. Now I'm telling him "hey, it's closer to orcad" and "the HTML BOM will make your life way easier training grad students" and "the package library is way more reliable" and these are legitimate honest-to-god features that are convincing to an experienced designer.
You see enough proprietary tools like this get the death knell and you learn to recognize the signs I guess. This one was pretty obvious and thankfully y'all have three years to download KiCAD ASAP, use it for every single project from here on out, gradually transition legacy documents in every CAD system to KiCAD. For once in my life I'll have some well-grounded confidence that my designs are safe and highly likely to still be usable in ten years when I badly need to debug them and create a new board revision.
I've seen Altium do decent at open EagleCAD. I've seen KiCAD do much better at opening EagleCAD. I assume KiCAD and EagleCAD work decently well with one another's file formats due to both being text based and documented.
That said, no matter how much someone paid for the software being converted from or to, I've yet to see a project that wasn't better served by starting from scratch and reproducing the design. Each tool just has a somewhat different paradigm (or default grid spacing or whatever) and like... EagleCAD symbols imported into Altium work they just suck. For example.
I've been dealing with this mess for a while. My colleague has decades worth of PCB designs trapped in OrCAD pre-cadence. I've been pushing him to EagleCAD, and have been pushing myself towards KiCAD for over a year. Now I'm telling him "hey, it's closer to orcad" and "the HTML BOM will make your life way easier training grad students" and "the package library is way more reliable" and these are legitimate honest-to-god features that are convincing to an experienced designer.
You see enough proprietary tools like this get the death knell and you learn to recognize the signs I guess. This one was pretty obvious and thankfully y'all have three years to download KiCAD ASAP, use it for every single project from here on out, gradually transition legacy documents in every CAD system to KiCAD. For once in my life I'll have some well-grounded confidence that my designs are safe and highly likely to still be usable in ten years when I badly need to debug them and create a new board revision.
Honestly, we had a bit trouble converting Altium projects to KiCad and kind of gave up on it. Probably also depends on complexity of the board and maybe we just need to invest more time into it. But for now we have to maintain a Altium license for older boards. All the new stuff we build in KiCad.
Yeah, I see no reason to use Eagle over KiCAD, and KiCAD is rapidly catching up on a pretty stagnant Altium, so for many users KiCAD is better choice there, even with money no object.
for me, it is a bit funny. i started using kicad because phil hagelberg created his keyboard using scheme to generate a kicad_pcb file. then one night, i am too tired to type on keyboard, i decided to put the components directly on kicad using mouse. now when i need (or want) to create a pcb, i just open kicad.
Does anyone know of a good tutorial to get started with Kicad?
I'm planning on making some very simple circuits, nothing fancy.
I'm planning on making some very simple circuits, nothing fancy.
It isn't too terrible to just play with it.
You have a schema capture tool (eeschema) and a board design (pcbnew). Start a new project, then start doing your circuit design in eeschema. I personally always disable move on zoom and install the solarized dark plugin, since it looks quite nice.
You have a schema capture tool (eeschema) and a board design (pcbnew). Start a new project, then start doing your circuit design in eeschema. I personally always disable move on zoom and install the solarized dark plugin, since it looks quite nice.
- Click and hold Middle mouse to move around the schematic / board view.
- P - places a power symbol (gnd / v+)
- A - add component
- E - edits parameters
- X - rotates on x axis
- Y - rotates on y axis
- M - move stuff
The intro to Kicad series from Digikey is really good.
Covers all the bases: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEBQazB0HUyR24ckSZ5u05TZH...
Covers all the bases: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEBQazB0HUyR24ckSZ5u05TZH...
Thanks! That looks like just the ticket :)
The "contextual electronics" tutorials on youtube are good to begin with. They are with older versions but most of the technique is unchanged for the most part.
Basics are still there.
There are some good books out there too such as "Kicad like a pro" which come recommended by people I trust.
#kicad @liberachat IRC is still active too as well as other channels.
Basics are still there.
There are some good books out there too such as "Kicad like a pro" which come recommended by people I trust.
#kicad @liberachat IRC is still active too as well as other channels.
The official guide [0] is good, but a bit too detailed.
I started out with ruiqimao's mechanical keyboard PCB guide [1], which I think is good enough to get my feet wet. From then on it's just messing around and checking the doc along the way.
[0]:https://docs.kicad.org/7.0/en/getting_started_in_kicad/getti... [1]:https://github.com/ruiqimao/keyboard-pcb-guide
[0]:https://docs.kicad.org/7.0/en/getting_started_in_kicad/getti... [1]:https://github.com/ruiqimao/keyboard-pcb-guide
Find some existing project similar to yours that has a PCB and a circuit diagram. I tend to recommend that synth DIY folks look at something like yusynth.net, and Yves Usson's designs. It doesn't have to be done in Kicad and indeed it might be better if it's not.
Redraw the circuit in Kicad, then redraw the PCB. See how close you can get to the original.
That way you're climbing the "learn how to use Kicad" learning curve, without having to climb the "learn how to lay out a PCB and circuit diagram" learning curve :-)
Redraw the circuit in Kicad, then redraw the PCB. See how close you can get to the original.
That way you're climbing the "learn how to use Kicad" learning curve, without having to climb the "learn how to lay out a PCB and circuit diagram" learning curve :-)
Just play with it.
My workflow (I'm a hobbyist, take what I say with a grain of salt):
- Installed "library loader" which Supports kicad
- Sign up for componentsearchengine.com
- Find parts I need on mouser.com/mouser.de (I'm in Germany) and look them up on component search engine, download the cad files; library loader picks them up automatically
- Use them in the schematic view, get your schematic finished FIRST
- Then "Update PCB from schematic". This imports all of the individual footprints and stuff you need to wire together.
- From here, should be like most other CADs; wire up your rats nest, do your ground fills ("Fill area" tool on the right), etc.
- Export Gerbers and drills after googling "jlcpcb export kicad 6" (they don't have a 7 guide yet but doesn't matter) just to double check the settings, then upload to jlc and they arrive about a week and a half later.
- In the schematic view, go to tools and then Generate BOM. It takes some finagling but you can usually massage the CSV it generates to upload to Mouser's shopping cart page to get an exact amount of parts you need, including the ability to specify multiples. Note that usually upping the amount of small components results in more for less overall cost (yes, really) so play with the quantities. Resistors can be purchased for a few bucks at the 500 to 1000 quantity, and are usually cheaper to do that than to order 5 or 10. Anyway, then you order your parts.
The "use footprints from other people" thing is contentious, I know. Most serious engineers make their own footprints. I don't have the time, personally, since unless I'm missing something it requires freecad for me to get the measurements right, and kicad doesn't have the required constraint solving tools to allow me to make sure I've got all of it right, so the workflow is CRAZY inefficient (lots of importing drawings from freecad, manually creating pads, then using multi-select and align tools to get them where they need to be...).
Kicad with a constraint solver like freecad's would be a ridiculously huge improvement IMO, but hopefully this is enough to get someone tinkering. Kicad devs if you're reading... pleeeeease. I know it's a lot of work.
My workflow (I'm a hobbyist, take what I say with a grain of salt):
- Installed "library loader" which Supports kicad
- Sign up for componentsearchengine.com
- Find parts I need on mouser.com/mouser.de (I'm in Germany) and look them up on component search engine, download the cad files; library loader picks them up automatically
- Use them in the schematic view, get your schematic finished FIRST
- Then "Update PCB from schematic". This imports all of the individual footprints and stuff you need to wire together.
- From here, should be like most other CADs; wire up your rats nest, do your ground fills ("Fill area" tool on the right), etc.
- Export Gerbers and drills after googling "jlcpcb export kicad 6" (they don't have a 7 guide yet but doesn't matter) just to double check the settings, then upload to jlc and they arrive about a week and a half later.
- In the schematic view, go to tools and then Generate BOM. It takes some finagling but you can usually massage the CSV it generates to upload to Mouser's shopping cart page to get an exact amount of parts you need, including the ability to specify multiples. Note that usually upping the amount of small components results in more for less overall cost (yes, really) so play with the quantities. Resistors can be purchased for a few bucks at the 500 to 1000 quantity, and are usually cheaper to do that than to order 5 or 10. Anyway, then you order your parts.
The "use footprints from other people" thing is contentious, I know. Most serious engineers make their own footprints. I don't have the time, personally, since unless I'm missing something it requires freecad for me to get the measurements right, and kicad doesn't have the required constraint solving tools to allow me to make sure I've got all of it right, so the workflow is CRAZY inefficient (lots of importing drawings from freecad, manually creating pads, then using multi-select and align tools to get them where they need to be...).
Kicad with a constraint solver like freecad's would be a ridiculously huge improvement IMO, but hopefully this is enough to get someone tinkering. Kicad devs if you're reading... pleeeeease. I know it's a lot of work.
> The "use footprints from other people" thing is contentious, I know. Most serious engineers make their own footprints.
Is there any reason for this to be the norm? Surely that means that “serious engineers” are just duplicating a shitload of effort?
Is there any reason for this to be the norm? Surely that means that “serious engineers” are just duplicating a shitload of effort?
Many of the ones you can find took no effort and are untested. A shitty script tried extracting information from a PDF datasheet or converting file formats for the purpose of driving internet traffic to an ad-riddled website.
Many are low-effort and untested. They were manually created by people who don't give a shit because they're not the ones using them.
Some are wrong. It's easy to get mixed up and number them wrong, usually upside down. Even when the issues are known, they rarely get fixed in published models and libraries.
Sometimes you need an engineered design. Pads can be designed for manufacturing, thermal, electrical, and mechanical considerations. Hardly any published pads were made by people who know how to do those things in the first place. Either way, they're not designing for your specific board.
In summary, it would be insane to spend money manufacturing random garbage from the internet, and a "good" pad may not be the right good pad for that board.
Many are low-effort and untested. They were manually created by people who don't give a shit because they're not the ones using them.
Some are wrong. It's easy to get mixed up and number them wrong, usually upside down. Even when the issues are known, they rarely get fixed in published models and libraries.
Sometimes you need an engineered design. Pads can be designed for manufacturing, thermal, electrical, and mechanical considerations. Hardly any published pads were made by people who know how to do those things in the first place. Either way, they're not designing for your specific board.
In summary, it would be insane to spend money manufacturing random garbage from the internet, and a "good" pad may not be the right good pad for that board.
If you never made a PCB you probably want a tutorial just to get the basics right and not learn them once you already made mistakes and send it to manufacturing.
Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. Expect to make mistakes on your first custom boards, even if you watch every tutorial. Be forgiving of yourself; it’s a learning process.
You're going to make mistakes. Expect it. Budget for it. You're a fool if you don't! My first board was laughably bad.
There are a lot of good tutorials on Youtube. I don't know of any particular one that's better than the rest.
I haven't moved to Kicad 7 yet, I don't know how many tutorials have been updated to the latest version.
I haven't moved to Kicad 7 yet, I don't know how many tutorials have been updated to the latest version.
They did not mention Linux at all in the notice. EAGLE supported Linux but as far as I know, Fusion 360 does not. Maybe I am their only user that cares, but this is the main reason I will be pushing my coworkers to migrate to KiCad.
When Autodesk claim Fusion 360 has the same functionality as Eagle and can replace it, that is a lie. It does not work on Linux so it is not a valid replacement.
When Autodesk claim Fusion 360 has the same functionality as Eagle and can replace it, that is a lie. It does not work on Linux so it is not a valid replacement.
They definitely don't care, or at least Miguel got ignored.
Fusion 360 is so slow and bloated it's an embarrassment on Windows. Takes minutes just to start. Loading it in VMware is a joke (my best computer is Ubuntu). I was willing to put up with it for doing 3D board renderings, but no. Not for actual work.
I cannot open an app inside a badly written and slow program with excessive DRM with a subset of the features of the program I've used for 20 years. It's just not happening. I will switch to KiCAD first, it's not nearly as big and uninteresting a transition. If I made MCAD + ECAD stuff more, maybe, but seriously how many people do that. It's a dream. It's super cool when and if it works.
It's like VR though. It has three real use cases -- checking interferences, shifting component positions to address interferences, and making accurate panel cutouts. That's all I've found. The first two are simply enough handled with IDF. Or a STP export from KiCAD which works fine. And a panel cutout can be addressed with a STP export too.
It's cute, Fusion 360, in that it tries to be MCAD, ECAD, etc all in one place. It, like most things of that nature, does badly at all of them. Features should be optional, let me explore MCAD-ECAD integration when I decide it would be an advantage rather than because of software limitations.
Fusion 360 is so slow and bloated it's an embarrassment on Windows. Takes minutes just to start. Loading it in VMware is a joke (my best computer is Ubuntu). I was willing to put up with it for doing 3D board renderings, but no. Not for actual work.
I cannot open an app inside a badly written and slow program with excessive DRM with a subset of the features of the program I've used for 20 years. It's just not happening. I will switch to KiCAD first, it's not nearly as big and uninteresting a transition. If I made MCAD + ECAD stuff more, maybe, but seriously how many people do that. It's a dream. It's super cool when and if it works.
It's like VR though. It has three real use cases -- checking interferences, shifting component positions to address interferences, and making accurate panel cutouts. That's all I've found. The first two are simply enough handled with IDF. Or a STP export from KiCAD which works fine. And a panel cutout can be addressed with a STP export too.
It's cute, Fusion 360, in that it tries to be MCAD, ECAD, etc all in one place. It, like most things of that nature, does badly at all of them. Features should be optional, let me explore MCAD-ECAD integration when I decide it would be an advantage rather than because of software limitations.
I think there is tooling to load stuff from KiCad to FreeCAD, then you can take care of any mechanical stuff there.
https://wiki.freecad.org/KicadStepUp_Workbench
https://wiki.freecad.org/KicadStepUp_Workbench
Yeah, I used freecad to fix up a screwy stp model for one of the parts, it was confusing but sufficient for that for sure. Weird how hard it was to move a solid body to the origin though.
If you meant in the other direction (and bidirectional) that looks good enough that I'd use it instead of Fusion in the I guess two situations it would come up -- creating a PCB outline from a larger model, or moving parts on the PCB to avoid interferences and have it show up in the layout software. Fusion 360 does do both of those.
Easy is to just export stp from KiCAD which works great for most situations but I hope this tool gets added to the kicad startup window soon.
We're already up to a schematic editor, layout editor, library editors, the best gerber viewer I know of (I have my coworkers install kicad just for the gerber viewer that I know is just gerbview but they use windows so this is way easier), and the calculator tool is amazing for calculating stripline impedances and RF attenuation and so on. A 3D tool that interfaces with the layout tool makes perfect sense to add.
edit: As an option and a standalone program with an interface rather than a unitary blob like Fusion ;-)
If you meant in the other direction (and bidirectional) that looks good enough that I'd use it instead of Fusion in the I guess two situations it would come up -- creating a PCB outline from a larger model, or moving parts on the PCB to avoid interferences and have it show up in the layout software. Fusion 360 does do both of those.
Easy is to just export stp from KiCAD which works great for most situations but I hope this tool gets added to the kicad startup window soon.
We're already up to a schematic editor, layout editor, library editors, the best gerber viewer I know of (I have my coworkers install kicad just for the gerber viewer that I know is just gerbview but they use windows so this is way easier), and the calculator tool is amazing for calculating stripline impedances and RF attenuation and so on. A 3D tool that interfaces with the layout tool makes perfect sense to add.
edit: As an option and a standalone program with an interface rather than a unitary blob like Fusion ;-)
Yea, I have looked at F360 EDA and there are a lot of features that either are buggy as hell or just don't exist. I'm not sure that F360 is going to get much uptake from EEs until the software has had a few more years to bake and by then, most will likely have migrated to other tools.
That Fusion 360 doesn't work on Linux is probably a business decision too, because it packs a lot of web tech. F360 isn't very far from a packaged web app.
Fusion 360 is very much a native app. Qt and all that jazz. Just one that's been nerfed in the name of cloud. Certainly it's trending more towards "cloud based" features over the years. As for Linux support, Fusion was kept around despite never turning a profit because it was the CEO's pet project. To that end I'd expect that not supporting Linux was mostly a business decision. Technically I don't think there's a ton of institutional knowledge around Linux on the product teams.
It's been well known internally that it makes an atrocious amount of RPC calls since the Carl Bass days. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that historically most of what you've seen with slow startup relates to authorization more than anything else. You could probably mitmproxy it if you really wanted to, the last time I checked they weren't doing any certificate pinning. Hell, at one point Little Snitch even wanted to know if I wanted to access a staging server.
It's been well known internally that it makes an atrocious amount of RPC calls since the Carl Bass days. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that historically most of what you've seen with slow startup relates to authorization more than anything else. You could probably mitmproxy it if you really wanted to, the last time I checked they weren't doing any certificate pinning. Hell, at one point Little Snitch even wanted to know if I wanted to access a staging server.
Autodesk bought EAGLE in 2016, so just about ten years between acquisition and discontinuation.
EAGLE is the first PCB design app I learned (and had a harder onramp than React) so this is sad, but it is important to note that most hobbyists have already switched over to KiCad: https://www.kicad.org/
EAGLE is the first PCB design app I learned (and had a harder onramp than React) so this is sad, but it is important to note that most hobbyists have already switched over to KiCad: https://www.kicad.org/
Even professionally, some of the places I worked for lately preferred KiCAD because you can check in libraries and projects to git and see meaningful diffs.
I am not sure if you realize that Eagle is fully embedded and rebranded within Fusion360 so you will have access to the same functionality but in integrated environment (for better or worse)
Speaking as a subscriber to Fusion: Do-it-all software is nearly always inferior to special purpose software. I don't use the built-in Eagle functionality in Fusion even though I've paid for it.
Yeah, I have no love for Autodesk as a begrudging Fusion360 user, but on the surface it seems that 10 years before sunsetting an acquired product as well as integrating it into an existing platform in that same timeframe is pretty good as far as a product acquisition goes from an end user perspective.
Yeah, on paper it looks an acceptable strategy. Unfortunately it looks like they botched execution.
Surprised it lasted that long. This reminds me of when they bought out Softimage in 2009 because XSI might have grown into something that challenges Maya, then released the last version in 2014 after delivering five years of barely any new features.
Let me guess, they gave it half-baked support for FBX files?
It's anecdotal, but I just recently started getting into more hardware-oriented stuff and found that KiCad came recommended for PCB design/etc. I found it to be pretty useful, but I'm too much of a novice to really give it a fair shake.
My advice to new kicad users is just to watch someone on YouTube go through a familiar project and see how their flow is, then try to create your own project from design to implementation. Next, check out the kicad library guidelines to see what it takes to create a library part so you can get everything right. Lastly, open up the shortcuts screen so you can see what key does what, you’ll get the most common ones quickly and the others you can see when you are going through menus.
Also used EAGLE first briefly for hobbyist work, right after it got acquired, but my team switched to Altium soon that seemed maybe too powerful for my sake. I used KiCad afterwards and it works on Mac like EAGLE did.
Not surprised. This guarantees Kicad all day long for hobby hackers going forward.
In other news, the "free" version of their Fusion 360 loses functionality to the paid version on a regular basis. Wonder if it will suffer a similar fate, or if the free version will end up to forever suffer as some emaciated skeleton of the real app.
In other news, the "free" version of their Fusion 360 loses functionality to the paid version on a regular basis. Wonder if it will suffer a similar fate, or if the free version will end up to forever suffer as some emaciated skeleton of the real app.
This guarantees Kicad all day long for hobby hackers going forward.
Based on what I see in the Chinese electronics communities, pirated Altium seems to be quite popular too.
Based on what I see in the Chinese electronics communities, pirated Altium seems to be quite popular too.
I work with random vendors from Ali Express, I do have to say there has been a growing number of them giving me zipped KiCAD files with edit histories indicating they likely used it to develop the project on.
That sounds fascinating... How do you end up with AliExpress vendors sending you EDA?
I just ask. It’s usually for dev boards for newly produced ICs that they are selling and there are no published reference designs yet.
I suspect not anymore.
The big advantage that Altium had for a while was that they were an available, portable format for parts libraries. Everybody was producing and giving away their symbol libraries in Altium format so you could always take whatever design you were given, extract the parts, fix any bugs or weirdness, and get on with life. Since those libraries accompanied the design, you knew those parts symbols had been proven out on at least one real PCB somewhere.
Then Altium went and closed those library formats so that you couldn't tear the parts out anymore. I dropped Altium right then, 100% for KiCad. I had already been doing about a quarter of my designs in KiCad, but I went all in when Altium did that.
The big advantage that Altium had for a while was that they were an available, portable format for parts libraries. Everybody was producing and giving away their symbol libraries in Altium format so you could always take whatever design you were given, extract the parts, fix any bugs or weirdness, and get on with life. Since those libraries accompanied the design, you knew those parts symbols had been proven out on at least one real PCB somewhere.
Then Altium went and closed those library formats so that you couldn't tear the parts out anymore. I dropped Altium right then, 100% for KiCad. I had already been doing about a quarter of my designs in KiCad, but I went all in when Altium did that.
Judging by the footprints/models I come across (from real companies doing 10M+ part volumes annually), there appears to be an entire society built around Altium Designer 2009 and educational licenses of Solidworks.
I just wish there was an actually free version of what Fusion360 offers. Even if it wasn’t nearly as good, like even half as good, it would be sufficient for hobby work. It’s just that to do anything remotely fancy there is simply no alternative. FreeCAD is just not even in the same league, sadly enough. The difference is so high that it’s not even worthwhile to discuss them together
I think the governance of the freecad project has recently changed so I'm cautiously hopeful that it will finally start seeing some project management and UX love.
https://lwn.net/Articles/924953/
https://ondsel.com/blog/freecad-approach-to-software-develop...
https://lwn.net/Articles/924953/
https://ondsel.com/blog/freecad-approach-to-software-develop...
I was unaware of this. Thanks for posting. This looks quite encouraging and I hope it takes the project to the next leve.
I think the unfortunate part about FreeCAD that is not really solvable is being based on OpenCASCADE. There are apparently some fundamental flaws in that kernel that make it leagues behind Parasolid and ACIS
I use https://www.onshape.com/ now which has a free version (for public files)
3D printing is in the same boat. It seems the whole CAD industry just wants to shoot itself in the foot and push people towards open source tools.
When I was into 3D printing 5 years ago I learnt Fusion 360 and it seemed like one of the better free-for-hobbyist tools, but even then it was buggy on Windows (didn't properly support 4K) and features were slowly being moved behind the premium paywall. SketchUp is also quite popular, but people stick to the old version that can be run offline, as the newer web based versions don't have the same features.
When I was into 3D printing 5 years ago I learnt Fusion 360 and it seemed like one of the better free-for-hobbyist tools, but even then it was buggy on Windows (didn't properly support 4K) and features were slowly being moved behind the premium paywall. SketchUp is also quite popular, but people stick to the old version that can be run offline, as the newer web based versions don't have the same features.
I've been burned with enough (temporarily) 'free' CAD software that I've finally made the permanent switch to FreeCAD.
I am a huge fan and can easily recommend it.
Maybe in the past, FreeCAD wasnt good, but today its just CAD software. Sure it might not have a wire harness tool that gives you a report about different wires, but I've used enough CATIA to know that CATIA doesnt work either. (maybe hyperbole, but basically Catia tools were so bad, my company ended up writing our own checks).
Bonus points that there is already google indexed support for every question you can imagine. Can't say that about niche Catia stuff.
I am a huge fan and can easily recommend it.
Maybe in the past, FreeCAD wasnt good, but today its just CAD software. Sure it might not have a wire harness tool that gives you a report about different wires, but I've used enough CATIA to know that CATIA doesnt work either. (maybe hyperbole, but basically Catia tools were so bad, my company ended up writing our own checks).
Bonus points that there is already google indexed support for every question you can imagine. Can't say that about niche Catia stuff.
I'm still annoyed that doing simple "here is a hex hole, multiply it in 10x12 grid" takes so fucking long in FreeCAD...
Like, the time to develop it? Or the time to compute it?
Because I did basically that with a parallelogram yesterday on a nvidia 3060 laptop(45*16=720 shapes) on a curve. It took like 5 minutes to compute it.
No joke, I am afraid of this model and I was happy to export it as a .stl and move on.
Because I did basically that with a parallelogram yesterday on a nvidia 3060 laptop(45*16=720 shapes) on a curve. It took like 5 minutes to compute it.
No joke, I am afraid of this model and I was happy to export it as a .stl and move on.
Since you all are discussing kicad, please don't forget that they accept donations to support future development
https://www.kicad.org/donate/
https://www.kicad.org/donate/
Any tips on how to convince my boss, and what amount to donate?
That's different from a donation, and frankly, I never needed professional support so far since KiCad's community is so great.
Around mid 2018 I was working on a personal project that absolutely needed a custom PCB.
KiCad 5 had just launched, and so I flipped a coin to decide if I should make it in Eagle or Kicad. I ended up choosing KiCad. Looking back five years later, I could not be happier.
Now almost on a monthly basis I hear about Fusion360 receiving some kind of update that strips features away in lieu of running them exclusively in the cloud, or they just arbitrarily change things and make it qualitatively worse for the end user by upselling them features. I don't want anything to do with that and so HP isn't getting a dime of my money.
KiCad 5 had just launched, and so I flipped a coin to decide if I should make it in Eagle or Kicad. I ended up choosing KiCad. Looking back five years later, I could not be happier.
Now almost on a monthly basis I hear about Fusion360 receiving some kind of update that strips features away in lieu of running them exclusively in the cloud, or they just arbitrarily change things and make it qualitatively worse for the end user by upselling them features. I don't want anything to do with that and so HP isn't getting a dime of my money.
I've been happy with https://horizon-eda.org/
Second this! Horizon EDA is far closer to Eagle's library management than KiCad. And it's also much better than Eagle.
There's also https://librepcb.org/
Has anyone had time to try Horizon and/or LibrePCB and compare them to KiCad?
Has anyone had time to try Horizon and/or LibrePCB and compare them to KiCad?
appears to be abandonware. i remember trying it back in its day.
It's had consistent contributions for 5 years now, with the latest being about a month ago.
thanks. i was going by the state of the documentation and the youtube presence.
I think it is just burst-y in development and a newer project. Last updates were in may.
Autodesk has the honor of being one of the few companies that are so shitty I'm _happy_ to pay money to their competitors.
I paid for a full solidworks license for a year (before discovering the makers license) and grumbled only mildly.
I paid for a full solidworks license for a year (before discovering the makers license) and grumbled only mildly.
You should consider donating to it's OSS competitors. Still lots of catching up needed in the cad space.
FreeCAD? What does FreeCAD need next?
Maybe Assembly, but I can always download the Assembly3 plugin.
Outside of having to download a plugin, FreeCAD has never limited me.
Maybe Assembly, but I can always download the Assembly3 plugin.
Outside of having to download a plugin, FreeCAD has never limited me.
It really really really needs to fix the topological naming problem. It also needs a UI overhaul and some convenience functionality to knock some of the rougher edges off common workflows. It's possible to do a lot with FreeCAD, so in that sense it's not particularly limited, but it's deeply annoying to have to jump through some of the hoops it puts in your way.
From what I've read, it needs more UI consistency between workbenches. They should also use the constraint solver from Solvespace everywhere.
The whole workbench system is shonky, for my money. It ends up with a situation where arbitrary UI context switches are needed to jump from one bit of functionality to another, just because of the historical accident of who worked on which piece of code.
Using the Solvespace solver is an interesting problem: it would switch up the FreeCAD licence from the LGPL to the GPLv3. The FreeCAD folks don't want to do that: it's fine from a licensing point of view, but they don't want the additional constraints.
Using the Solvespace solver is an interesting problem: it would switch up the FreeCAD licence from the LGPL to the GPLv3. The FreeCAD folks don't want to do that: it's fine from a licensing point of view, but they don't want the additional constraints.
The only thing I am happy about Autodesk is that they do at least attempt maintaining a Mac version. Wish this was more common on other CAD developers.
We're a heavy AutoDESK using company. BricsCAD is looking more and more tempting. AutoCAD is a slow and heavy dinosaur and the amount of innovation and improvement between versions is honestly atrocious.
> I paid for a full solidworks license for a year (before discovering the makers license) and grumbled only mildly.
Does that Solidworks makers license still exist? Does it include the CAM stuff for CNC machines?
Does that Solidworks makers license still exist? Does it include the CAM stuff for CNC machines?
They've adjusted it since when it was first released. Here's the current page about it now though:
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-...
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-...
And that site is precisely why Fusion is eating Solidworks for breakfast.
Getting solid pricing information from that is impossible. "Contact Sales" is a dead stop in this day and age ... sorry.
Fusion 360 is $545 annually even for commercial usage. It's right on the first damn page.
As for the "maker" edition, that edition of Solidworks nominally stops if you make $2,000. Most people will blow past that in a hurry. Most woodworkers pass that on one piece of furniture.
Getting solid pricing information from that is impossible. "Contact Sales" is a dead stop in this day and age ... sorry.
Fusion 360 is $545 annually even for commercial usage. It's right on the first damn page.
As for the "maker" edition, that edition of Solidworks nominally stops if you make $2,000. Most people will blow past that in a hurry. Most woodworkers pass that on one piece of furniture.
I think at least in my case I dropped fusion360 when they decided they weren't going to support the last windows machine in my house capable of running it (aka an old win7 machine). I again tried to use freeCAD, but ended up Atom3d, which is probably a better choice for the kinds of CAD stuff I was doing which was 100% stuff for my 3d printer, most of which were simple boxes with holes, standoffs, and the like for random PCBs. I mean I should be able to do that with freecad, but if it takes me another 20 hours to figure out how to make it work, its not been worth my time vs just paying for the base atom3d license (which is like $150/200 for a perpetual license).
Kicad though, 100% its not perfect, but its good enough for anything i'm doing.
Kicad though, 100% its not perfect, but its good enough for anything i'm doing.
Oh, I'm with you about Solidworks. I'm also not a fan of the kind of pricing, approach, etc that Solidworks has.
Also not at all a fan of Autodesk though, having used Fusion 360 from shortly after it came out. It's lack of working 5-axis CNC support (in any tier) was a turn off, especially when I was building a 5th axis for my (very hobby level) CNC system.
Then they moved CNC into a newly created commercial tier, then they put the 2&3 axis CNC stuff back into standard hobby tier, but leaving the 4&5 axis stuff in commercial tier.
No idea if their 4&5 axis stuff even works properly yet, and I've personally lost interest in the "maker" side of things in the meantime.
Also not at all a fan of Autodesk though, having used Fusion 360 from shortly after it came out. It's lack of working 5-axis CNC support (in any tier) was a turn off, especially when I was building a 5th axis for my (very hobby level) CNC system.
Then they moved CNC into a newly created commercial tier, then they put the 2&3 axis CNC stuff back into standard hobby tier, but leaving the 4&5 axis stuff in commercial tier.
No idea if their 4&5 axis stuff even works properly yet, and I've personally lost interest in the "maker" side of things in the meantime.
Shapr3d has been nice in my very limited experience too, much more intuitive than SolidWorks for hobbyists.
Luckily, we went off Eagle a while ago. We used it mainly because we couldn't justify 4 Altium Licenses for our department. Building system prototypes and measurement equipment just isn't profitable enough inside a multi-billion USD super tanker of a company it seems.
We try to go open source to prevent stuff like that as much as possible. I would say we are around 80% there so far (excluding obviously manufacturer-specific stuff like STM Cube IDE). KiCad, Gitea, drawio, Python(and thank heavens for pyvisa), Octave, OpenProject. Next up is probably Eclipse Capella. The only stuff we currently can't get rid of are Simulink and SolidWorks.
Well, maybe in the future.
We try to go open source to prevent stuff like that as much as possible. I would say we are around 80% there so far (excluding obviously manufacturer-specific stuff like STM Cube IDE). KiCad, Gitea, drawio, Python(and thank heavens for pyvisa), Octave, OpenProject. Next up is probably Eclipse Capella. The only stuff we currently can't get rid of are Simulink and SolidWorks.
Well, maybe in the future.
You might want to check out wxMaxima for symbolic math.
FreeCAD and Solvespace are both aiming at mcad, but neither are yet. FreeCAD could get better if they spend a year focusing on usability and consistency improvements.
FreeCAD and Solvespace are both aiming at mcad, but neither are yet. FreeCAD could get better if they spend a year focusing on usability and consistency improvements.
Are you using simulink for code generation or something else? I used to work at a company that made automotive controllers and a simulink "platform" for developing controls on them, and I occasionally flirt with starting a similar company that uses a cheaper/open source toolchain, but always come up empty handed. There are some academic libraries and papers around the Xcos ecosystem, but nothing near production level that I could find.
Yes, mainly Code Generation for Automotive. I do have to admit it's a great piece of Software!
“Can I work with my files locally in Fusion 360? Fusion 360 is a cloud-based 3D mode…” Ok bye, KiCad it is.
There is a great migration guide here from the flux team on how to onboard coming from Eagle
https://docs.flux.ai/Introduction/eagle-to-flux---migration-...
https://docs.flux.ai/Introduction/eagle-to-flux---migration-...
Kicad is where you want to go in the free price category of ecad programs.
IMHO its better than OrCAD, probably as good or better than diptrace and about on par with Altium for people without managed libraries.
Once they improve their library management system, it will surpass Altium in nearly every way possible.
Once they improve their library management system, it will surpass Altium in nearly every way possible.
Push and shove isn’t great, the schematic editor doesn’t sensibly move wires around when you drag components, you can’t query designs with SQLish syntax to make bulk changes, there’s no room functionality, no via stitching and guarding, no multi-channel… it’s good but not there yet.
Isn't scripting API de-facto way to do bulk stuff for KiCAD.
But yeah saying it is as advanced as Altium is a stretch.
"Good enough for all but the most advanced high-speed stuff" is probably better description.
But yeah saying it is as advanced as Altium is a stretch.
"Good enough for all but the most advanced high-speed stuff" is probably better description.
Good enough for most anything as long as you’re willing to really grit your way through it for the more complicated stuff — some of which is high speed but also including multichannel and big bga fan-out and other stuff.
Also — the common open source refrain “there’s a scripting interface” is just another way of saying “the feature isn’t implemented, but you can implement it yourself.” It’s not terribly helpful.
Also — the common open source refrain “there’s a scripting interface” is just another way of saying “the feature isn’t implemented, but you can implement it yourself.” It’s not terribly helpful.
Kicad 7 has orthogonal wire drag in the schematic now.
Ah nice! That’s good to hear. I have no doubt that the things I listed will get implemented eventually. Altium should indeed be scared.
Autodesk: one of the most despicable, anti-customer, anti-consumer companies on the planet.
I struggle with the quirks of FreeCAD happily to avoid putting a penny in Autodesk's pocket. Too bad CAD is such a complex, niche product category.
I struggle with the quirks of FreeCAD happily to avoid putting a penny in Autodesk's pocket. Too bad CAD is such a complex, niche product category.
This is a weird take for me. Compared to the time I save with fusion360, even just as a tool for solving geometry problems, it is easily worth the fees. If you need to both design and either print/cut/machine in the same tool, it is a fantastic value. I wish they made some different decisions, but their product is great value.
There’s a large contingent on HN where if a company is at all successful at making money, they are of the opinion that that company is evil.
Only the companies, organizations and products that fail to earn can be morally good.
Interestingly, it is also the case that the failures are usually caused, not by any fault of the failure itself but rather by the antagonistic, evil behavior of the successes.
Only the companies, organizations and products that fail to earn can be morally good.
Interestingly, it is also the case that the failures are usually caused, not by any fault of the failure itself but rather by the antagonistic, evil behavior of the successes.
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”
Nobody has a problem with companies that make money by offering a solid product that people buy. The anger comes from companies gaining money by other means. Any of these might qualify:
Nobody has a problem with companies that make money by offering a solid product that people buy. The anger comes from companies gaining money by other means. Any of these might qualify:
- Selling my data.
- Buying out the competition and letting the products die.
- employing manipulative tricks to get extra money from people (especially children).
Exactly. A lot of us have no problem with making money by delivering value on straightforward terms. It's the underhanded shit that receives richly-deserved scorn.
Autodesk: "Oh no no no, you didn't BUY this software CD in a shrink-wrapped box. You just rented a 'perpetual license' and how dare you attempt to recoup that if you end up not using it."
And Autodesk managed to finagle a ruling that utterly tramples a consumer's right under the Doctrine of First Sale:
"The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner."
But somehow Autodesk is exempt from this. WTF.
Autodesk: "Oh no no no, you didn't BUY this software CD in a shrink-wrapped box. You just rented a 'perpetual license' and how dare you attempt to recoup that if you end up not using it."
And Autodesk managed to finagle a ruling that utterly tramples a consumer's right under the Doctrine of First Sale:
"The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner."
But somehow Autodesk is exempt from this. WTF.
That's not the problem. I suggest looking at the history of Autodesk's attacks on their own customers, and the way they inveigled yet another ignorant judge to rule in their favor against every software PURCHASER. You could buy a shrink-wrapped box of software from Autodesk, never open it, but then be prevented from selling it to someone else to recoup your costs if you ended up not using it.
I know because they pulled this shit on me when I put an unopened copy of Inventor or 3DS Max on eBay. Their lawyers contacted eBay and threatened them, so of course eBay instantly folded and took down the listing. This violated my rights under the Doctrine of First Sale:
"The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner."
I had the last laugh, however.
Meanwhile, Autodesk also attacked a kid who had put up a 3DS Max fan site, offering tutorials and tips. They seized his domain.
Autodesk was the vanguard of anti-consumer, trash software and media companies that have continued to take advantage of hopelessly ignorant judges and legislators to rip people off.
- former Autodesk employee
I know because they pulled this shit on me when I put an unopened copy of Inventor or 3DS Max on eBay. Their lawyers contacted eBay and threatened them, so of course eBay instantly folded and took down the listing. This violated my rights under the Doctrine of First Sale:
"The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner."
I had the last laugh, however.
Meanwhile, Autodesk also attacked a kid who had put up a 3DS Max fan site, offering tutorials and tips. They seized his domain.
Autodesk was the vanguard of anti-consumer, trash software and media companies that have continued to take advantage of hopelessly ignorant judges and legislators to rip people off.
- former Autodesk employee
All the while our zeitgeist is that we should be paid large salaries for flexible remote work on things we enjoy without any input from project managers or business owners :-). These salaries should come out of some bucket of money other than "corporate business profit" , ideally :-)
(yes yes its not necessarily the same people.
But often enough it is! :)
(yes yes its not necessarily the same people.
But often enough it is! :)
The thing that’s frustrating about Fusion is how badly it performs even on very capable machines. There’s not really a good reason for that, even if it is a high value product.
The #1 frustration is that it's online only, and Autodesk won't let you e.g. use simulation features with local hardware. You HAVE to buy their cloud credits and you HAVE to use their cloud system to use the software beyond the basic features. It's not cheap, unless you're making products with it or are wealthy it's out of reach.
I have a decent computer with plenty of hardware for simulation as long as I'm willing to wait for the results... like a half hour or more in even simple cases. But because Autodesk wants lots and lots of money, they removed the ability to do that from the software. Fusion360 could already do it, but not any more.
Interestingly, in the time frame between when Fusion360 went pay to play for more than very basic features and now, Autodesk (ADSK) lost almost 40% of their corporate value.
I have a decent computer with plenty of hardware for simulation as long as I'm willing to wait for the results... like a half hour or more in even simple cases. But because Autodesk wants lots and lots of money, they removed the ability to do that from the software. Fusion360 could already do it, but not any more.
Interestingly, in the time frame between when Fusion360 went pay to play for more than very basic features and now, Autodesk (ADSK) lost almost 40% of their corporate value.
When the hardware keeps getting better, but the software is still slow for even the simplest things, you know they're cutting a lot of corners. Decades of CAD research and industry investment should have amounted to something more. The priority was obviously locking you in to their cloud.
It is good value, but I don't feel it's worth the $70 a month they charge, especially when compared with other subscription application prices. The Adobe Creative Cloud subscription at $54.99 includes quite a few applications, and while they have their issues as well I'm not sure I'd put Fusion 360 above in value. Of course it depends on what you do with the tools.
Fusion 360 is the cheapest useable MCAD package by a considerable margin. It might not be worth the price to you, but it's an incredible bargain compared to any of the alternatives.
While histrionic, the person you're replying to sounds a lot like many Maya users. It's really shocking how low-quality Maya is compared to how much it costs.
I no longer trust them at all. Fusion360 had a lot of promise for being next gen collaborative software, but the pricing Autodesk slapped on to it and the tiered feature set put paid to that.
Sadly, there are few alternatives to it, and I have decided to subscribe to it because there's nothing else at that price level that's got the CAM features I need.
That said, the version I can afford doesn't have lots of features I want, including the 4/5 axis stuff, and I'd love to be able to use the simulation features, but that's too expensive also.
So I use it for CAD/CAM for now, and I hope something better comes along at some point... while I learn to hand program 4th and 5th axis stuff and use open source FEA programs to try to learn some simulation.
Sadly, there are few alternatives to it, and I have decided to subscribe to it because there's nothing else at that price level that's got the CAM features I need.
That said, the version I can afford doesn't have lots of features I want, including the 4/5 axis stuff, and I'd love to be able to use the simulation features, but that's too expensive also.
So I use it for CAD/CAM for now, and I hope something better comes along at some point... while I learn to hand program 4th and 5th axis stuff and use open source FEA programs to try to learn some simulation.
Maybe Solidworks Maker edition?
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-...
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-...
For small hobby projects FreeCAD seems to be fine though. Learning curve is a bit steep, but just requires that you put in 3-4 hours every night for about a month. At that point you will have learned most of it.
There are a bunch of companies that are out there, like, killing people and spewing pollution into the environment, but I guess moving formerly local program into the cloud is annoying too.
Red herring unrelated to the topic. Corporations have too much power because people put too much faith in them, depend on them too much, and give them passes when they cause economic and actual harm. Corporations should be abolished.
KiCad is pretty good these days, and I hear OrCad is used by Apple and is inexpensive.
OrCAD's UI is amazingly backward by modern UI standards. Prepare to be stymied by the fact that none of your muscle memory from literally any application, ever, applies to any tool within its workflow.
Fully true. I use Altium Designer day-to-day and the one time I tried to get something done in OrCAD it was completely baffling.
OTOH, OrCad works and Apple makes billions. :shrugs:
Yes, OrCAD is used by Apple from the style of iDevice schematics floating around on the interwebs.
A contractor told me he can get OrCad for a few hundred dollars per year but I never see the actual price being listed on its web site. It looks like those "if you need to ask the price you cannot afford it" software. My gut tells me it is one of these, seeing it is from one of the big EDAs.
And OrCad looks atrocious on the HiDPI screen the contractor is using... UI scaling is all screwed up.
A contractor told me he can get OrCad for a few hundred dollars per year but I never see the actual price being listed on its web site. It looks like those "if you need to ask the price you cannot afford it" software. My gut tells me it is one of these, seeing it is from one of the big EDAs.
And OrCad looks atrocious on the HiDPI screen the contractor is using... UI scaling is all screwed up.
I used OrCad in industrial embedded products in the late 90's. I'm surprised it's still going.
I used OrCad at university in the 80s. The UI was unintuitive even back then, when there were very few other GUI applications to compare it with. I guess the people who used it a lot back then got used to the UI and developed muscle memory for it. One of my classmates works at Apple, and it is certainly the case for him.
Candence bought OrCad and killed off the PCB editor and rebranded their utterly shitty one. The UI is horrid and barely usable without paying thousands for training. Worse support and training is all through EMA Design Automation who are the grosses parasites in the industry.
The issue is that despite usability of Cadence being so much more confusing than Altium, you'll find that at some point when a design gets big/complex enough, Altium won't be able to handle it. This means that you've got companies who have to then move up from Altium to Cadence or Mentor to manage that complexity. If anyone is going to get into PCB design today (and it's an excellent field to get into, many people retiring and you can get a good job with just an AS degree) I would still recommend learning Altium before the other guys due to its popularity. I'm surprised to hear your thoughts about EMA though - I did a few webinars for them a couple of years ago and thought they had a great push to support customers. Perhaps I just didn't have the same perspective as the customers though.
The one thing that most surprises me about Altium is that they've yet to get into meaningful simulation territory (post-layout PCB extraction). This is the biggest feature holding them back from competing with the enterprise tools in my opinion. I was hoping for some continued collaboration with Simberian after the impedance calculator came out but have yet to see anything further.
The one thing that most surprises me about Altium is that they've yet to get into meaningful simulation territory (post-layout PCB extraction). This is the biggest feature holding them back from competing with the enterprise tools in my opinion. I was hoping for some continued collaboration with Simberian after the impedance calculator came out but have yet to see anything further.
I agree that Altium is the best for starting professionally. The very biggest and most complicated designs tend to move to Mentor because even Cadence eventually chokes. Simberean would be the one to develop a plugin, but they already have a standalone gui.
Cadence just follows the old school sales contact model.
OrCad itself is relatively inexpensive, I believe the initial license is in the $2k/seat ballpark and the yearly maintenance support renewal is $500/seat.
OrCad itself is relatively inexpensive, I believe the initial license is in the $2k/seat ballpark and the yearly maintenance support renewal is $500/seat.
Am I wrong in saying that the license is perpetual even if you don’t pay for support?
ie if I stop paying it won’t lock up and stop me opening my projects.
ie if I stop paying it won’t lock up and stop me opening my projects.
I just got into a great flow where I have a couple ULPs that export BOM and CPL files for JLCPCB, been very painless way of getting stuff made for a while
I don't want to lock myself into EasyEDA, and trying KiCAD a few years ago wasn't the easiest switchover...
I don't want to lock myself into EasyEDA, and trying KiCAD a few years ago wasn't the easiest switchover...
KiCAD has plugins that will bounce Gerber files in exactly the format JLCPCB wants, including assembly and BOM info, with one click.
v7 is quite good. There are a couple UI irritations remaining but the core feature set is awesome.
v7 is quite good. There are a couple UI irritations remaining but the core feature set is awesome.
KiCAD has improved massively since version 5, although the switch will still take some brain-contortion. IMHO it's worth it, and the sooner you take the plunge the better.
How are the spice integrations for kicad now? I haven't used it in probably 10 years so I'm not sure where it's at anymore. I also had trouble using it for laying out traces where length/resistance was critical (high frequency signaling). Altium has been the only thing I've touched recently, but I also rarely do circuit design now, so a "friendly" interface is nice. That's why I prefer using fusion 360 to solidworks or nx.
I don't use it but I have heard both good things and bad things about it. One of the big limitations is the fact they use ngspice for their simulation and many models are encrypted. So lots of folks use it as a frontend for ltspice. TL;DR, it can be challenging, but there is support for it.
I used EasyEDA for a while because I liked the interface but after coming back to KiCAD a few times it had gotten good enough that I didn't look back. That was 3 years ago now.
KiCad v7 is wonderful.
looks like somebody saw the drama on the lack of notice to changes from reddit and decide to go another way.
Kinda makes sense - you can earn a lot of money selling copies for 3 years while taking all the devs off it and doing security bugfixes only.
Been a few years since I've worked with EEs, but isn't EAGLE the industry standard? Like, would this be similar to if Adobe shut down Photoshop?
Eagle is far from an industry standard. In fact I don't remember hearing about a single company who uses it. Perhaps some small companies preferred Eagle. In industry it is far more common to see hardware companies use Altium, OrCad, Cadence, or even Mentor Graphics. I've also heard of one company who uses KiCad.
One of the big drivers for which EDA tool suite hardware companies choose is integration/compatibility with their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools. My understanding is the bigger tools have better solutions for this than Eagle.
One of the big drivers for which EDA tool suite hardware companies choose is integration/compatibility with their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools. My understanding is the bigger tools have better solutions for this than Eagle.
I worked for a company about 10 years ago that used eagle. As far as I know they haven't switched away from it. But it was a very small shop (<20 people) and I would definitely say it is rather the exception than the norm. Before KiCad took of the last few years, it was pretty popular with hobbyists though.
Altium is probably the industry standard, though there are several high-end competitors (OrCAD for example). Similar to how Solidworks is usually considered the standard for CAD, but there are lots of competitors in the $2k/annum range. EAGLE was/is certainly used in production in many places, but it gained traction because it was competent and their free tier was good enough for almost all hobbyist work.
EAGLE was barely maintained for years, until Autodesk bought it and started making a lot of improvements, but the changes were often buggy and broke existing workflows. They also changed the pricing structure and many pro customers were unhappy about that too. But while a lot of people grouched about it, it's not like EAGLE was ever been a shining beacon of good UX.
It seems like EAGLE is being merged into Fusion 360 instead, so you have a unified electronics/CAD environment.
EAGLE was barely maintained for years, until Autodesk bought it and started making a lot of improvements, but the changes were often buggy and broke existing workflows. They also changed the pricing structure and many pro customers were unhappy about that too. But while a lot of people grouched about it, it's not like EAGLE was ever been a shining beacon of good UX.
It seems like EAGLE is being merged into Fusion 360 instead, so you have a unified electronics/CAD environment.
Altium is resting on their laurels though, whereas KiCad is actually picking up velocity and adoption. One of the biggest things the EDA industry lacks (and altium doesn't even support until you pay them big money) is meaningful automation / version control.
Altium has this, but coming from the software side of things, holy hell is it poorly implemented and clunky.
Altium has this, but coming from the software side of things, holy hell is it poorly implemented and clunky.
The functionality is already included in fusion360, so it's more like if Adobe stopped selling standalone installations of Photoshop and forced all their users onto cloud-oriented subscription plans (hint: that's what Adobe did).
I'd say that Eagle was more like the hobbyist's standard than the industry standard. It's what you used if you want something that would do small 2-sided boards for free.
Eagle has some "features" which will prevent it a loooong time from being industry standard.
Others have mentioned the "plain text files" thing, so let me just mention the "plain text files" thing.
Everything is stored as a plain text file. It's just text. Hell, it's practically human-readable, if you're a fairly nerdy human.
You can store them in git, or any other source code repository. You can email them or stick them up on a server, without them getting mangled, because they're just text.
You can run scripts on them, or just plain open them in a text editor and do search-and-replace on them.
You can even write code to write files for you - take a bunch of stuff and programmatically design footprints and components, any way you like, because it's just plain text files, describing lines and co-ordinates and stuff.
Can't get any less locked-in than that!
Everything is stored as a plain text file. It's just text. Hell, it's practically human-readable, if you're a fairly nerdy human.
You can store them in git, or any other source code repository. You can email them or stick them up on a server, without them getting mangled, because they're just text.
You can run scripts on them, or just plain open them in a text editor and do search-and-replace on them.
You can even write code to write files for you - take a bunch of stuff and programmatically design footprints and components, any way you like, because it's just plain text files, describing lines and co-ordinates and stuff.
Can't get any less locked-in than that!
We use kicad for large complicated projects. The tool works but you need to get creative (write scripts) to manage libraries and run simulations. It's also missing some RF features that you need to integrate external tools for.
For smaller hobby project it's really good and has all you need.
For smaller hobby project it's really good and has all you need.
sorry to say it, but no great loss. i learned on EAGLE and even bought a license. (or was there no free version at all?) i dare say i became quite expert at it (not hard, it's a very limited software) and liked the script/macro capabilities which i used for BOM mgmt. but come on, it's terrible.
that said, it's too bad they don't open source it. maybe they will.
now i use orcad. there was a price and mindshare war going on and orcad was offered for $400. it was something of a bronze age for EDA at the time.
that said, it's too bad they don't open source it. maybe they will.
now i use orcad. there was a price and mindshare war going on and orcad was offered for $400. it was something of a bronze age for EDA at the time.
[deleted]
I will also offer my praise for kicad.
Its not open source, but after trying a number of these tools (as a total noob hobbyist) I found Diptrace to be the most intuitive and they do offer a freeware for hobbyists
Diptrace isn't too bad, they also have a cheap version [1] for non-commercial use if you need more than just 2 layer boards. Only thing is I wish they had a native OSX version.
https://diptrace.com/buy/non-profit/
https://diptrace.com/buy/non-profit/
I recently tried the OSX version, its running via some WINE wrapper, has a huge package size and doesn't support Retina resolution. Not recommended.
Why is Autodesk allowed to buy and kill off its competitors?
A typical acquikill stretched in time. They might have integrated worthy EAGLE ideas into their own product though.
Reminds me Macromedia Fireworks vs Adobe Photoshop situation - Fireworks had been acquired, good parts transplanted to Photoshop, then killed.
Reminds me Macromedia Fireworks vs Adobe Photoshop situation - Fireworks had been acquired, good parts transplanted to Photoshop, then killed.
Corporations going to corporate.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
They already effectively killed EAGLE as I knew it, so this isn't really a surprise. What a wonderful piece of software. I'm sad to see it go.
They still sell EAGLE? I switched to Fusion 360 ages ago. Also tried KiCAD but eh, it's just not the same quality.
Still salty that Altium destroyed CircuitMaker with low-quality updates with show-stopping bugs, and absolutely failed to incentivize me to upgrade to CircuitStudio because it is wildly different from CircuitMaker.
Still salty that Altium destroyed CircuitMaker with low-quality updates with show-stopping bugs, and absolutely failed to incentivize me to upgrade to CircuitStudio because it is wildly different from CircuitMaker.
We professionally design, engineer and manufacture accessible technology for disabled veterans and we are also developing robotic systems for industrial automation.
We have a half-dozen active projects running on Kicad and have been using it for almost 4 years now.
As with anything, there have been occasional frustrations with updates but overall, the tool consistently gets better over time.
The main decision to select Kicad was based on the plain text representation of project state which enables (1) improved workflows with Git, (2) scriptable bulk edits (3) simpler, sharable extensions / plugins and (4) easier continuous integration for build artifacts.