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KiCad 6.0.0

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Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#21

Post by myself248 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #7

Do any professionals here use it? I did some AutoCAD in high school and tried this years ago. It felt competent and less crashy than late 90s AutoCAD, but a little more awkward.

Yeah, 5.x has been our standard at $dayjob for a while; we have a few Altium seats for high-end stuff, but most of our day-to-day prototype stuff is done in Kicad. We've completely ditched Eagle.

And obviously for my after-hours stuff it's all kicad, all the time. I've been playing with 5.99 for a while and I'm very excited for a 6.0.0 stable.

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#22

Post by fpgaminer »

fortysixdegrees wrote: post #15
fpgaminer wrote: post #13

I recently learned KiCad and did some basic boards with it. It was a breeze; didn't run into any crashes, bugs, or major difficulties. I learned Eagle a few years ago, and from my vague memory I remember Eagle being a bit less obvious to use. KiCad felt straightforward in every way except maybe drawing the board cuts. (I did run into one paper cut. The PCB DRC didn't flag unconnected nets; there's a second button nex…

What assembly house did you use?

JLCPCB; turn time has been about a week and then a few days for DHL to drop it at my door. Their website is very buggy, and the placement preview is useless, but they do have a real engineer review everything before assembly so all my boards have been assembled correctly thus far. They even caught one of my mistakes before.

I recommend finding parts using LCSC's website (their parts supplier), as it has more useful parametric search. Then cross reference to JLC's to double check pricing and availability.

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#23

Post by floatboth »

nikitaga wrote: post #12

As much as I love open source... I tried using KiCAD to design a PCB and have it assembled, but ultimately switched to EasyEDA – not because their app is better (it really isn't), but because of their smooth integrations. EasyEDA is connected to a huge library of components (LCSC.com) with footprints and 3D shapes and everything, and built-in integration with their manufacturing service (JLCPCB.com) which uses those…

Meanwhile I'm carefully importing KiCad symbols and footprints (and polishing them and contributing to the community library) into a much less popular, newer open source EDA tool…

because it's just that good: https://horizon-eda.org

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#24

Post by fortysixdegrees »

fpgaminer wrote: post #22
fortysixdegrees wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What assembly house did you use?

JLCPCB; turn time has been about a week and then a few days for DHL to drop it at my door. Their website is very buggy, and the placement preview is useless, but they do have a real engineer review everything before assembly so all my boards have been assembled correctly thus far. They even caught one of my mistakes before. I recommend finding parts using LCSC's website (their parts supplier), as it has more useful p…

Interesting. I'm flirting with the idea of ordering boards with all the easy to get discretes on there then finishing by baking on the hard to get chips I have in stock with lower temp solder paste. I would need to cut out the parts of the solder mask with components on there, or maybe I can do that at the Gerber phase

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#25

Post by e-_pusher »

bcantrill wrote: post #11
paulryanrogers wrote: post #7

Do any professionals here use it? I did some AutoCAD in high school and tried this years ago. It felt competent and less crashy than late 90s AutoCAD, but a little more awkward.

We are using it for essentially all of our prototype boards here at Oxide (low complexity, low layer count) -- and keeping a very close eye on it for our larger boards, where we still suffer from proprietary software. (And to be clear, when I say "suffer", I don't mean the mere principle but the true pathologies of proprietary software: license servers dying; licenses expiring incorrectly; software dying, costing los…

If you don’t mind me asking, what EDA tool are you guys using at the moment at Oxide for your motherboards?

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#28

Post by Ccecil »

elihu wrote: post #6

I just installed rc2 the other day, and was happy to see that I can import SVG files to the copper layer now in the pcb editor. (I have a kicad project I haven't worked on in a few years so I don't know when they made that change, but it's nice to see it works now.)

I believe that is new in 6.0.

IIRC...one of the reasons I started using 5.99 nightly was because it had that feature.

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#29

Post by craftyjon »

zem wrote: post #4
sokoloff wrote: post #3

The blog entry noting the tagging of 6.0 RC1 and some of the highlights of what's in it might be more communicative than just the github tree. https://www.kicad.org/blog/2021/12/Development-Highlight-Thi...

thanks, that is indeed more informative, especially since i couldn't find a changelog in the sources.

The 6.0 release hasn't been made officially yet (the source code tagging is just the first step in that process). There will be an announcement and changelog once it happens.

Re: KiCad 6.0.0

#30

Post by bcantrill »

e-_pusher wrote: post #25
bcantrill wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are using it for essentially all of our prototype boards here at Oxide (low complexity, low layer count) -- and keeping a very close eye on it for our larger boards, where we still suffer from proprietary software. (And to be clear, when I say "suffer", I don't mean the mere principle but the true pathologies of proprietary software: license servers dying; licenses expiring incorrectly; software dying, costing los…

If you don’t mind me asking, what EDA tool are you guys using at the moment at Oxide for your motherboards?

Sorry, missed this question! We are (like many/most?) using OrCAD for schematic capture and Allegro for layout -- which is to say, Cadence and Cadence.
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