jolshefsky wrote:First is the loose binding between schematic and layout. If I use a transistor, I expect for layout to "know" that it has three active pins that are connected as I specified in the schematic. I would rather that there would be a set of "common" packages that I could select from, and if I chose, I could use a non-standard package. I gather you're just given a dialog with every conceivable package and you have to pick one. It also appears you have to do this for every single component — it's not clear if you can, for instance, specify one package for a subset of the transistors in a schematic.
You don't pick the footprint you want to use while in the schematic editor. You draw your schematic first, save a netlist, and load it in the
CVpcb program. You then go through all your devices and select which footprints you want to associate with which devices.
You can either have the entire list of footprints or you can toggle the option to select by type, so that for example: Selecting a resistor would only show footprints that are for resistors.
There is also a function to associate footprints with certain components automatically, although it doesn't work too well. I think this is a let-down of the library configuration though, not the feature itself.
jolshefsky wrote:Second is the lack of support for devices with multiple gates. This seems like a jaw-dropping flaw if it is true. I should be able to wire a schematic and place op-amp symbols wherever I need them, and then during the set-up for layout, select a specific real-world op-amp package to associate with certain symbols. Finally, I should be able to swap gates, so if it's more convenient for AMP23 to be amplifier C on U3 than amplifier A on U1 then I should be able to swap U3-C and U1-A. Eagle at least supports swapping gates within one package (e.g. U3-C and U3-A) which has proved invaluable during layout. It appears KiCad requires the user to return to the schematic capture, disconnect U3-C and U3-A, then reconnect the three wires from U3-C to U3-A and vice versa.
This confused me the first time I tried to use it, too, but it's easy to do.
You can easily change between gates (or units as KiCAD calls them) by right-clicking on the gate, selecting "Edit Component" then "Unit" and selecting which one you want (A, B, C, D etc)
You could easily change the IC itself by double-clicking on the reference, and changing say 'U1' to 'U3' or such.
jolshefsky wrote:Third is a common complaint I have about many open-source projects: I'm required to become a software engineer and expert in software development to use the damn thing. OpenOffice is nice because I can just use it by downloading a compiled package. KiCad offers some packages, but, for instance, of the two Brokentoaster.com most-recent "stable" releases for OSX, one does not work at all because it's missing critical files, and the other does not include any standard libraries (at least I'm savvy enough to figure out that much). As such, I can't just use the product, I need to spend several days figuring out how to download and compile the source before I can even begin to test the package. If I can't figure all this out, the noise-level of unhelpful help (RTFM, switch to Ubuntu, you need to install Bazaar and all its numerous dependencies, etc.) is unmanageable.
Please let me know if I'm mistaken on any of these three items.
The most problems as we have seen are on OSX (Which is not officially supported anyway)
However, there is no problem with the Windows installer, and most big Linux distributions seem to come with a KiCAD package already.
(But as I said in an earlier post, for Ubuntu, you will want to use a PPA to get the latest version, as I do)
So depending on your OS and situation will depend if you have to compile it yourself or not.
But I ultimately agree with you there - a lot of open-source software simply says "just make and install it!" as if it's the simplest thing in the world to do.