KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

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JA12
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by JA12 »

There actually are people who don't like open source (software).
I've done closed software development myself (advanced stuff in a international company), but I do like OSS very much. My experience as a dev and as a user tells me that big price tag doesn't guarantee you a quality software product.
Same applies for the support part of it.

There's also a learning curve if you're a beginner, you can't make that go away with your wallet.

I would suggest that if you can't decide between suitable software packages, do a pcb in KiCAD, Eagle, gEDA, and weigh pros and cons yourself.

I'm a beginner in electronics and I chose KiCAD. I haven't tried Eagle (laziness) but I could do that if I'd need to. I'm running Ubuntu and the free version is available in the software center.
Agent24 wrote: If Linux provided 100% compatibility with all my unique Windows applications, I probably would switch entirely to Linux for the cost savings but at the moment I don't see that ever happening.
That will never ever happen. There's no reason why Linux should support Windows applications, and there's no practical or efficient way either. What you'll need is your applications to support Linux.

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westfw
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by westfw »

Major lag as you describe
I'm going to have to revise my complaint. It doesn't seem to be "lag" as much as a failure of the GUI to detect mouse movement events when in the main drawing space. putting a track on a PCB does nothing at all until you drag the mouse pointer outside of the drawing area (which of course generates a different mouse event, and it wakes up.) Still a fatal problem, though.

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neutron spin
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by neutron spin »

Eagle is the most commonly used Cad programs for hobbyists...I paid the hundred bucks or whatever for the "student" version or whatever they call it and it was worth every penny ....many cheapskates think they are saving money by using some of the free stuff...but as the saying goes...you get what you pay for!...regards...:)

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westfw
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by westfw »

you get what you pay for!
I have no more worries about what will happen to KICAD if the current developers get bored, married, excessively employed, or become parents, than I have worries about what will happen to EAGLE now that they've been acquired by a distributor. Or that my HP touchpad and cisco Flip will become orphaned as a result of some corporate whim... Or my PII with 0.5G of memory will become unuseful.

(not that some of the other "free" CAD programs that I've seen recommended aren't pretty scary in their level of (non) support. Which is the one that is still running in DOS mode? I suppose it could still be swell, but sheesh...)

(and then there is "sweat equity", which is at least an option for open source software. Not a very realistic option for most people, but better than nothing!)

(Of course, one of the things that has particularly impressed me about EAGLE is the fact that it has gotten significantly better over the last few years. v3.55 was (I think) pre-GUI and painful. 4.0 ran on MACs as an X application (which I thought was a wonderful compromise, but it sure LOOKS awful compared to the current version.) And (some of) the features that people ask for actually get implemented.)

OLIMEX
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by OLIMEX »

Eagle is nice and easy to use but few years earlier the complete package was about 4-5MB download, now it's 40-50MB and I do not see any significant improvement

we still keep use Eagle 4 as we have paid full licensee few years ago for it and then after they released Eagle 5 our licensee was not working with the new version so we had to pay another $$$ to work with Eagle 5, instead of this we decided to stay with Eagle 4

KiCAD have significant improvement since last time when I try it, it looks much more capable now and generates nice PCB manufacturing files, I put few tutorials on our web yesterday including how to generate PCB manufacturing files from Eagle, Target 3001 and KiCAD at this web page http://www.olimex.com/pcb/pcb-techinfo.html

Tsvetan

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jolshefsky
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by jolshefsky »

As a user of Eagle, I am familiar with its disadvantage: cost, and difficulty of creating and using specialty packages. I don't think selecting a specific package during schematic capture is as detrimental is it is made out to be — if I have a bunch of resistors, I'll pick a common package for my application and then use the copy command to place more, changing the package if it becomes necessary during layout.

From what I have heard, there are a few things that concern me about KiCad.

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.

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.

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.

OLIMEX
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by OLIMEX »

jolshefsky wrote: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).
this must be OSX support glitch, as yesterday I googled for kicad to test it and I found binaries for Linux and Windows which works without problem.

Tsvetan

Agent24
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by Agent24 »

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. :roll:

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westfw
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by westfw »

The whole footprint selection thing seems partially like an artifact of the libraries for EAGLE. For example, the default transistor libraries don't give you much choice of package, but when I design a PCB with transistors, I have an "NPN-Generic" transistor that has lots of packages associated with it, and then I fill in the actual part number and select the package as appropriate. That sounds very similar to KICAD's model. (and what happens if I'm wrong and pick a TO92-EBC package when I should have used a TO92-CEB package? Bad things! (What happens in KICAD?))

There are a LOT of EAGLE libraries where there are god-awful number of separate parts with specific packages rather than more generic symbols with lots of possible packages. I sort-of decided that this was 1) a matter of style, and 2) historical (predating other mechanisms for distinguishing parts, like the "attributes" in v5) A lot of people end up not using the standard libraries in EAGLE for this sort of reason (though they're still nice to have.)

(It still doesn't get me multiple PCBs for one schematic, though.)

Agent24
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by Agent24 »

westfw wrote:I have an "NPN-Generic" transistor that has lots of packages associated with it, and then I fill in the actual part number and select the package as appropriate. That sounds very similar to KICAD's model. (and what happens if I'm wrong and pick a TO92-EBC package when I should have used a TO92-CEB package? Bad things! (What happens in KICAD?))
If you chose a footprint with a wrong pinout, you can just go back into CVpcb and change it to the correct one. (making sure to reload the netlist in PCBnew to update the new selection)

Or, if it was a one-off in the design, you could just manually edit the pads on that specific transistor and change what pin each one connects to.

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westfw
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by westfw »

If you chose a footprint with a wrong pinout, you can just go back into CVpcb and change it to the correct one. (making sure to reload the netlist in PCBnew to update the new selection)
Well sure. But is there any way to enforce "this device can only use these pinouts"? If I copy something from a JPG on the net than uses a 2SD965, do I have to guess/lookup which pinout is appropriate?

Agent24
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by Agent24 »

westfw wrote:
If you chose a footprint with a wrong pinout, you can just go back into CVpcb and change it to the correct one. (making sure to reload the netlist in PCBnew to update the new selection)
Well sure. But is there any way to enforce "this device can only use these pinouts"? If I copy something from a JPG on the net than uses a 2SD965, do I have to guess/lookup which pinout is appropriate?
In that specific case, since KiCAD does not have a 2SD965 in the default libraries, you would need to do a lookup of the part anyway.

My method for using a 2SD965 in KiCAD as it stands now, would be the following:


When adding the 2SD965 to the schematic I would pick the appropriate basic symbol, in this case, an NPN transistor.

Once added to the schematic, I would then label it as a 2SD965. I could thus afterwards copy and paste it as many times as I needed in the schematic without having to edit anything each time.

When selecting the footprint for the 2SD965 in CVpcb, I would have to look up the datasheet and pick the appropriate pinout, or modify\create a footprint if a correct one did not exist.


This is obviously workable but if you want to make sure your 2SD965 always uses the correct footprint without you having to remember which one you needed to use, you could easily set it up to do so.

As I described earlier, there is a feature on CVpcb to filter the footprints list, only showing those which relate to the type of component you currently have selected. (Selecting a resistor will only show footprints for resistors)


You can therefore do either:

1) Create or edit a footprint with the correct pinout for a 2SD965 and save it under an appropriate name, such as "2SD965" for sensibility. You would then ensure that it would only show up in the filtered list for NPN transistors. (this suits the method written above)

2) Create a schematic symbol\part called "2SD965" and also create\edit a footprint with the correct pinout for a 2SD965 and save it under an appropriate name, such as "2SD965" for sensibility. You would then ensure that it would only show up in the filtered list when selecting the 2SD965. (this would be best if you knew you would be using the 2SD965 for many designs)

Thus every time you were to select the 2SD965's footprint in CVpcb, only the pre-created and correct footprint for the 2SD965 would show in the list for you to select, making it impossible to select the wrong one.

This would also work with the "Automatic footprint association" feature of CVpcb.


Obviously you'd need to do a little work to set this up initially, but after that you would have no problems for future use.


Note: When creating your own KiCAD symbols, footprints, modules etc, do NOT save your new components into KiCADs own default libraries. These libraries may get overwritten during an upgrade, so it's in your best interest (and sanity) to make your own libraries for your own parts.

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sheepdog
 
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Re: KiCAD vs Eagle...Please help me get off the fence!

Post by sheepdog »

50+ pages of info on using KiCad now available at....

http://KiCadHowTo.org

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