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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

#71

Post by andromeduck »

atoav wrote: post #70
antattack wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wanted to take a shot at over last Christmas break but the state of GTK on MacOS made it a non starter unfortunately.

Easy EDA still seems like the best for most projects.

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

#72

Post by atoav »

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

I use horizon for all my schematics and it is very usable. The one thing that is not there yet is the coverage of the parts library, which is because all people involved only put parts into the official library if they have been approved by others. That means parts in that library are very unlikely to have mistakes, but it also slows down the process.

I ended up doing my own fork of the library while parts were still stuck in the PR process.

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

#73

Post by metaphor »

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…

Curious how long did that take and what iteration made it to production? What CAD was used for prior designs? Can you give an example of a "minority layout" that your tech deemed unfavorable?

I really want to believe KiCAD is there...but when billable labor rates are $150+/hr, and a single iteration of that complexity can easily burn US$10k+/ea in one-off prototype quantities + 4-6 month slip for manufacturing, assembly, reintegration, and verification testing, all of a sudden (free == cost-effective ?) becomes a very real risk consideration...never mind that I've yet to engage a customer that was willing to subsidize my development budget based on technical decision to assume a tool risk because it makes the cost of doing business marginally cheaper for me.

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

#75

Post by Kliment »

nrclark wrote: post #65
Futureshocked wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 styl…

When I need this sort of schematic in Kicad I have the top-level be a "table of contents" page and everything else is below that. Works great, you can insert/delete pages at will and also you have a nice place to put docs about what is on which page. You then need to use global labels instead of hierarchical labels to link stuff together of course.

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

#76

Post by dotancohen »

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…

  > any time a CAD package that was "free" or low price became reasonably competitive, one of the existing CAD
  > vendors would buy out the developers and quietly smother it or turn it into a feeder for their "real" product.
And now you witness the power of the GPL.

Say what you will about RMS's personality, he was a genius at foreseeing what could be and developing tools robust enough to combat the best funded legal and social attacks.

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

#77

Post by dotancohen »

metaphor wrote: post #73
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…

Curious how long did that take and what iteration made it to production? What CAD was used for prior designs? Can you give an example of a "minority layout" that your tech deemed unfavorable? I really want to believe KiCAD is there...but when billable labor rates are $150+/hr, and a single iteration of that complexity can easily burn US$10k+/ea in one-off prototype quantities + 4-6 month slip for manufacturing, assem…

Open source tooling is not about saving the cost of a software license.

Open source tooling is about having indefinite access to your entire tool chain, including the ability to fix or modify it.

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

#78

Post by dotancohen »

robomartin wrote: post #60
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…

> 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. No, not really. KiCAD is more than adequate for DC to GHz range circuitry. Add to that being able to develop custom tools in Python and we are at a point where there's almost no comparison --in favor of KiCAD. For context, we…

  > Nobody who knows what they are doing would ever use schematic symbols and PCB footprints from a library.
Why would somebody maintain their own library of symbols?

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

#79

Post by PennRobotics »

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.

I would honestly manually recreate my simple PCB designs in Falstad's simulator[1] and use judgment to decide whether further thermal or high-freq analysis is necessary.

I haven't looked in a few years, but you'll likely be hard-pressed to find an open source simulator that will give you analog, pure digital, "real" digital (logic with slew/noise/nonlinearities), electromagnetic, and thermal simulations plus usability.

ANSYS is a well-established professional simulation suite and doesn't even really meet the usability threshold, in my opinion.

[1] https://www.falstad.com/circuit/

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

#80

Post by phkahler »

metaphor wrote: post #73
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…

Curious how long did that take and what iteration made it to production? What CAD was used for prior designs? Can you give an example of a "minority layout" that your tech deemed unfavorable? I really want to believe KiCAD is there...but when billable labor rates are $150+/hr, and a single iteration of that complexity can easily burn US$10k+/ea in one-off prototype quantities + 4-6 month slip for manufacturing, assem…

One shouldn't lay all of those costs on a tool just because a design needs an iteration to be correct. That happens even with expensive tools. The only question is weather there are any hindrances to doing the design as best as the humans know how.
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