Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

KiCad 7.0

kicad.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 121 posts

Re: KiCad 7.0

#11

Post by connicpu »

bbayer wrote: post #8

I want to learn PCB design, mostly with ARM and ESP based designs. How would I learn basics? I know theory part but I really couldn't figure out why they determine which component and which value they have to use. I mean there are resistors, capacitors all over the place but I really want to learn reason behind it. Also I guess there are some basics related power, battery, UART, USB etc. Is there any source that cove…

For designing with basic components I recommend starting with microcontrollers on a breadboard. There's plenty of great youtube channels that talk about this stuff as well, like GreatScott and Ben Eater

Re: KiCad 7.0

#12

Post by inamberclad »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #4

This feels like a major step forward, not for the software itself (although it probably is) but for the release schedule. KiCad 5 came out in 2018. KiCad 6 was long delayed and waterfalled and did not come out until late 2021/early 2022. And now only a year later we see KiCad 7. Seems like release engineering is coming more on lockdown which is super great news!

The forced workflow is a feature IMO. In a production engineering scenario, it's very helpful to have tools that enforce some level of best practice. Especially since the time and money to rework incorrectly designed circuit boards can prohibitive.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#13

Post by aix1 »

hales wrote: post #7

> Pack & Move Footprint Tool This is the biggest usability improvement on the list. Computers are good at menial sorting, humans hate it. For those not in the know: your nice, organised schematic gets turned into a randomly assorted pile of parts when you first open the PCB editor. Now imagine your board has over a hundred parts, including lots of duplicated copy+pasted bits. My workarounds have been to: 1. Number th…

When choosing how to lay out footprints during packing, does KiCad take into account electrical connections between them?

(This does sound like an extremely useful feature either way, but I'm curious.)

Re: KiCad 7.0

#14

Post by robomartin »

We said goodbye to Altium Designer when KiCad 6.0 was released. Altium’s focus and resources shifted towards trying to turn AD into a cloud-based tool. As a result the software people actually wanted to use suffered. Every release introduced a plethora of new bugs. Nobody really cared for cloud EDA. Altium thought they would be able to sell the company to Autodesk. This almost happened. In the end that did not happen.

KiCad 6.0 easily covered 95% of PCB design needs, if not 98%. With 7.0 things are better yet. At this point, I can’t see people paying thousands of dollars per year for maintenance on tools like AD. It makes no sense at all.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#15

Post by bpye »

sleepytimetea wrote: post #3

Kicad is excellent - I found 6.0 to be much improved and more useable than the version I had previously. I just downloaded 7.0 and it already is a LOT snappier and happier with loading the symbol libraries. I need to check if there have been any improvements in the auto-router integrations - it was pretty rough the last time I tried it out.

I guess it depends what you're doing. I haven't tried the autorouter, but I've found the push and shove routing is pretty good.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#16

Post by sleepytimetea »

hales wrote: post #7

> Pack & Move Footprint Tool This is the biggest usability improvement on the list. Computers are good at menial sorting, humans hate it. For those not in the know: your nice, organised schematic gets turned into a randomly assorted pile of parts when you first open the PCB editor. Now imagine your board has over a hundred parts, including lots of duplicated copy+pasted bits. My workarounds have been to: 1. Number th…

They listed it at the very end of the Release Notes but its a killer feature - I have been struggling with the random packing of components onto the PCB when the first export to PCB is done. It almost made me delete most of the schematic and then incrementally add to schematic and then make it add to PCB but its such a pain.

This new Pack and Move feature seems like a life-saver, since we can use it anytime to add components to a selection with Shift-select and then that will pull it into the other desired grouping area on the PCB.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#17

Post by qiqitori »

bbayer wrote: post #8

I want to learn PCB design, mostly with ARM and ESP based designs. How would I learn basics? I know theory part but I really couldn't figure out why they determine which component and which value they have to use. I mean there are resistors, capacitors all over the place but I really want to learn reason behind it. Also I guess there are some basics related power, battery, UART, USB etc. Is there any source that cove…

There are certain usage patterns that you will find all over the place, e.g.:

- Current-limiting resistors

- The resistor divider (two resistors between e.g. 3.3V and GND. The point between the two resistors will be between 3.3V and 0V, depending on the resistor values. Sometimes you need a certain voltage. For example to bias transistors.

- Delays, using a resistor and a capacitor. The values will determine the delay.

- Capacitors next to oscillators

- Filters, using a resistor and a capacitor. The order and the values will determine the cutoff frequency.

- Most capacitors on a PCB probably sit right next to a chip. Often, at least one per chip. They get rid of noise already on the line, and act as short-term energy storage for the chip next to it.

- Decoupling capacitors to get rid of the DC component of a signal (i.e. if there is a signal fluctuating between 4.5V and 5.5V before the cap, it'll be -0.5V and 0.5V behind the cap. Often, you need to add a DC component and later remove it, so that's two capacitors already.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#18

Post by Tryffel »

bbayer wrote: post #8

I want to learn PCB design, mostly with ARM and ESP based designs. How would I learn basics? I know theory part but I really couldn't figure out why they determine which component and which value they have to use. I mean there are resistors, capacitors all over the place but I really want to learn reason behind it. Also I guess there are some basics related power, battery, UART, USB etc. Is there any source that cove…

So you want to learn electronics? I suggest that you take the time to actually learn the theory behind it and learn how resistance, capacitance, inductance affects the system. It is hard but helps a lot. If you want to understand digital systems, then learn how digital basic components work and how you combine them to create more complex systems. Had electronics as my major in my bachelor's degree, and the mental model is really important when it comes to electronics, and the only way to really understand it and get the correct mental model is by repeatedly analyzing the networks and the change over time (resistance,capacitance,inductance) and all of sudden it makes perfectly sense!

Re: KiCad 7.0

#19

Post by sircastor »

I just got used to using KiCad 6!!

I'm absolutely delighted that KiCad is as usable and continues to be developed on. I remember a time not too long ago where the Mac version was tragically unmaintained. I now do all my EDA in KiCad. I'm not a professional EE. All my stuff is hobbiest, and relatively amateur, but it's so nice to have tools that are so flexible.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#20

Post by sircastor »

bbayer wrote: post #8

I want to learn PCB design, mostly with ARM and ESP based designs. How would I learn basics? I know theory part but I really couldn't figure out why they determine which component and which value they have to use. I mean there are resistors, capacitors all over the place but I really want to learn reason behind it. Also I guess there are some basics related power, battery, UART, USB etc. Is there any source that cove…

Make: Electronics by Charles Platt will take you through all the whys and wheres, starting at the very basics. I highly recommend it.

Also, I'll recommend the "Follow the example" approach of just looking at the data sheets for various components and modules. Especially stuff like the Arduino Uno - It's got a microcontroller, and then everything around it is just support. You start to see patterns where there (for example) a 10uF and 0.1uF Capacitor around power inputs. And they're everywhere so even if you don't know why (yet) you do know that you need capacitors around power inputs.

Post reply on HN