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Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool

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

#61

Post by namibj »

gaze wrote: post #49
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.

You shouldn’t use autorouters at all. They have essentially no reasonable use.

Are you aware of what TopoR can do? And yes, for 1/2 layer routing it seems to work fine when fed from Kicad.

For relatively insensitive signals, or when you can constrain the layout with rough guidance to something that should easily pass signal integrity, this technology makes it so you can go get lunch while the computer gets a decent layout that you'd typically check before sending it off to the prototype fab or get started on quickly running one in-house (for that <2h turn-around from layout to power-on, including printing and soldering).

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

#62

Post by Futureshocked »

nrclark wrote: post #54
Futureshocked wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, multi-sheet schematics works. It has since version 5.

Nice, I didn't realize. All the tutorials and stuff out there all show a hierarchical schematic as the only way to get multi-sheet, instead of just a flat schematic with some stuff on one page and some stuff on another. I know the UI has changed a lot over the years.

Oh, sorry, I may have mislead you by mistake.

KiCad's multi-sheet schematic is hierarchical. There is one root sheet and beyond that the structure is flexible.

Do you have an example multi-sheet schematic as you'd like to be able to have in KiCad?

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

#63

Post by bogantech »

gaze wrote: post #49
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.

You shouldn’t use autorouters at all. They have essentially no reasonable use.

They are useful if you really know what you're doing.

Someone who tends to only use the autorouter in a bad way probably wouldn't do much better doing it by hand anyway as they wouldn't be aware of the pitfalls.

They'd still end up with 500 vias, traces all over the place, bad placement and not doing any pinswapping anyway

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

#65

Post by nrclark »

Futureshocked wrote: post #62
nrclark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, I didn't realize. All the tutorials and stuff out there all show a hierarchical schematic as the only way to get multi-sheet, instead of just a flat schematic with some stuff on one page and some stuff on another. I know the UI has changed a lot over the years.

Oh, sorry, I may have mislead you by mistake. KiCad's multi-sheet schematic is hierarchical. There is one root sheet and beyond that the structure is flexible. Do you have an example multi-sheet schematic as you'd like to be able to have in KiCad?

Sure thing. I can't share any of my employer's schematics, but here's one that's drafted in a similar style:

https://digilent.com/reference/_media/reference/programmable...

There's no hierarchy to the schematic. Pages are inserted/deleted in a freeform way, the same as you'd do with a Word document. Reference designators are in a global namespace, and so are net names.

It feels like it's a pretty common drafting style, at least in my corner of the world. I've worked at two companies that use this style, and I also see it a fair amount on reference-designs like the linked example.

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

#66

Post by stephen_g »

folmar wrote: post #27
amelius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The expensive as hell "default" alternative, Altium Designer, has autoplacer to comlement the autorouter, and it usually works really nicely.

Altium not that expensive for commercial tools in this industry - the 'expensive as hell' alternatives are Xpedition from Mentor Graphics (now Siemens) or Cadence Allegro.

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

#68

Post by dagw »

stargrazer wrote: post #67
dagw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploratory data analysis is much of what I do in my day job and I've never heard it called EDA.

Electronic Design Automation

Yea, that's what I meant. Even as someone who works with Exploratory Data Analysis, I've never heard EDA used outside the context of Electronics.

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

#69

Post by ilaksh »

mastax wrote: post #45
ilaksh wrote: post #44

Is there a tool that can simulate some types of Kicad outputs? I mean something like do a PCB design for a simple circuit and then "run" or debug it in some way.

For analog electrical simulation there's SPICE. Kicad has a spice tool built in, but I haven't used it. It has some improvements in Kicad 6. I use LTSpice. For digital or systems simulation there's Renode. You have to recreate the system in Renode,there's no Kicad integration.

Maybe with the new s-expressions it will be more feasible for someone to create an importer for Renode. Assuming enough annotations or whatever.

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

#70

Post by atoav »

antattack wrote: post #52
amelius wrote: post #16

Not to distract from the topic, but I was just wondering: how is HorizonEDA doing these days? Can KiCAD learn from this project? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062174

Horizon is great and all but it insists on using real parts for everything which would be ok if it had lcsc parts catalog which it does not.

But it uses json for parts. So scraping and just writing it to your library is a real option, especially when you fall back on existing parts. It can also import parts from kicad, although I didn't try that.
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