Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool • Hacker News Board

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#31

Post by altrus » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This should be a good release, although this particular article could probably be edited down to 50% of its size without losing any information :-). One of the things that KiCAD is doing to making a legitimate open framework for eCAD design. Not surprisingly, back in the 80's when the "CAD Framework Initiative" started up and everyone was going to be able to mix and match CAD components a bunch of CAD vendors got sca…

I think the simpler explanation is that good PCB CAD tools are extremely difficult and require a lot of developer effort. KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely. The differences may not be obvious for simple boards with low speed connections, but it’s a world of difference to use one of the high end CAD tools on a comple…

We use kicad for the design of a 28 layer PCB that includes a number of high speed (>10Gbps) impedance controlled lanes, including 25Gbps signal lines, and implementing three DDR4 banks, with a varying number of discrete chips, and breaking out from a large pin BGA, using a number of HDI features (blind/buried vias, etc).

We've been closely tracking the releases, and, at this point, our layout tech prefers using Kicad over another (proprietary) tool for the majority of layouts - so much so that's she's pushing for us to port all our designs to it.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#32

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

xondono wrote: post #3

ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This should be a good release, although this particular article could probably be edited down to 50% of its size without losing any information :-). One of the things that KiCAD is doing to making a legitimate open framework for eCAD design. Not surprisingly, back in the 80's when the "CAD Framework Initiative" started up and everyone was going to be able to mix and match CAD components a bunch of CAD vendors got sca…

You’re seeing too much conspiracies. CAD is hard, and it’s very hard to displace the incumbents, for the same reason that is hard to change programming languages, people have too much tied up in the old option. Most of the free/open source alternatives were built by part providers (Mouser, Farnell,..). The objective was clear, if your CAD has direct links to your site, this will probably make you the default provider…

Autodesk has a long history of buying up competitors that make cheaper products, going back to the MS-DOS days.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#33

Post by nixpulvis » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:10 PM UTC

> Eeschema files will be self-contained and will not depend on libraries. You will be able to publish and share these files and be sure that they will open properly on other people's KiCad 6 instances.

Oh thank god. Now if only I could automatically import and upgrade all my old projects with missing libraries seemlessly... or can I?

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#34

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

altrus wrote: post #31

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the simpler explanation is that good PCB CAD tools are extremely difficult and require a lot of developer effort. KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely. The differences may not be obvious for simple boards with low speed connections, but it’s a world of difference to use one of the high end CAD tools on a comple…

We use kicad for the design of a 28 layer PCB that includes a number of high speed (>10Gbps) impedance controlled lanes, including 25Gbps signal lines, and implementing three DDR4 banks, with a varying number of discrete chips, and breaking out from a large pin BGA, using a number of HDI features (blind/buried vias, etc). We've been closely tracking the releases, and, at this point, our layout tech prefers using Kica…

What do you use for calculation of signal propagation delay and parasitics when you do layout in KiCAD?

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#35

Post by formerly_proven » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #30

Two features I miss: 1. Ability to produce several PCB layouts from the same schematic (e.g. right-to-left and left-to-right, I needed this a couple of times to accommodate different chassis) 2. Ability to have "outboard" circuit fragments (i.e. a set of panel mounted pots interconnected with wires, or a sub-board that's logically a part of the same circuit). Neither of which seems to be there, unless the review forg…

2.) is there for individual components (prefix reference with #), but not for schematics. It would be pretty neat though if you could use hierarchical sheets for whole-system design that way, though. Note that you can have multiple PCBs in one PCB file. Kicad doesn't really care.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#36

Post by elcritch » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This should be a good release, although this particular article could probably be edited down to 50% of its size without losing any information :-). One of the things that KiCAD is doing to making a legitimate open framework for eCAD design. Not surprisingly, back in the 80's when the "CAD Framework Initiative" started up and everyone was going to be able to mix and match CAD components a bunch of CAD vendors got sca…

I think the simpler explanation is that good PCB CAD tools are extremely difficult and require a lot of developer effort. KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely. The differences may not be obvious for simple boards with low speed connections, but it’s a world of difference to use one of the high end CAD tools on a comple…

> KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely.

Not all of them. I personally chose Kicad 5 over Eagle because Eagle's UX was a pain to use. I just never found any advantages over Kicad despite a few clunky parts of the Kicad 5 the overall experience in Kicad was just more productive. Of course, most of my designs have been sub-10MHz with a few 25-50 MHz Ethernet parts.

Statements like this just leave me wondering what useful features the high end software provides that are really missing? Do they automatically re-tune differential pairs after you move things around? Many companies still seem to have separate people or software for doing BOM management so it'd seem they're not superior in that aspect either. Just feels like I'm missing something.

> The differences may not be obvious for simple boards with low speed connections, but it’s a world of difference to use one of the high end CAD tools on a complex board with high speed traces.

That covers a significant amount of the board practical PCB's that are needed for a lot of projects. Still I've been told Altium and such are much better for high speed signals, but also been told that Altium _doesn't_ do 2.5D or signal simulation and that you need to goto the next tier of commercial vendors.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#37

Post by madengr » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

elcritch wrote: post #36

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the simpler explanation is that good PCB CAD tools are extremely difficult and require a lot of developer effort. KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely. The differences may not be obvious for simple boards with low speed connections, but it’s a world of difference to use one of the high end CAD tools on a comple…

> KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely. Not all of them. I personally chose Kicad 5 over Eagle because Eagle's UX was a pain to use. I just never found any advantages over Kicad despite a few clunky parts of the Kicad 5 the overall experience in Kicad was just more productive. Of course, most of my designs have been su…

>Do they automatically re-tune differential pairs after you move things around?

Yes, in fact they can length re-rematch groups of differential pairs.

Altium does not have built in SI analysis, but it does have optional DC PI analysis, and likely AC in the future.

Most SI and PI are point tools anyway, so even if you use Cadence, it’s not built-in, rather requires importing into another tool.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#38

Post by elcritch » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #15

Animats wrote: post #4

I was a KiCAD user until they dropped support for the auto-router. They apparently had some dispute with the developer of the auto-router, and took out auto-router integration. (Yeah, there's some hack to make it still work, maybe.) I have an old board I'd like to revise slightly, but it's too much work and risk to convert to the new "interactive" (i.e. manual) routing system.

I've never worked with the auto-router, but personally I think placement is giving me the most headaches.

Yes, initial placement is a pain. Especially on a brand new layouts!

However, I've been contemplating the idea of creating a smarter auto-placement for new boards where it'd take the relative positions on the schematic into account. As in taking the relative distances of parts on the schematic, probably using a weighted heuristic / k-means to determine part clusters.

That'd be about 80% of what I'd want from a full auto-router. The new S-Expression eschema format should make it almost trivial to do as an external program. I tried on the old format and it was way to difficult to parse. Though if the Python API's really have been updated then it could be made into a plugin.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#39

Post by altrus » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #34

altrus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use kicad for the design of a 28 layer PCB that includes a number of high speed (>10Gbps) impedance controlled lanes, including 25Gbps signal lines, and implementing three DDR4 banks, with a varying number of discrete chips, and breaking out from a large pin BGA, using a number of HDI features (blind/buried vias, etc). We've been closely tracking the releases, and, at this point, our layout tech prefers using Kica…

What do you use for calculation of signal propagation delay and parasitics when you do layout in KiCAD?

That is stack up dependant - we work the board house on that, depending on geometery and material. Once they give us a ballpark, we will adjust our widths and clearances to something reasonable, recognizing that fab will adjust the traces and arcs to whatever spec we subsequently need.

Re: Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

#40

Post by DominoTree » Wed, Oct 27, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #28

I tried KiCAD out a few years ago but abandoned it because you couldn't move components around easily without breaking the connected wires. IIRC there was "G" shortcut to do it but the pathing was so poor as to not be worthwhile. Has that gotten better in recent versions and it is worth another go?

The new push-and-shove router in 6 makes it way easier