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

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

#81

Post by amelius » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

elcritch wrote: post #38

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.

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 a…

Sounds cool. But a simpler possibility would be an option to do placement in part. E.g. select a bunch of components, then click a button and they're transferred to the layout, and then you manually place them. Then continue selecting other components, etc.

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

#82

Post by jwr » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 10:24 AM UTC

nrclark wrote: post #51

For any Kicad devs reading this thread, are multi-sheet schematics on the roadmap at all? I work with some Orcad designers who view it as a necessary feature for the style of schematics that they draw. They feel like forced-hierarchical is arbitrary and high friction, but also don't want to throw a complex design onto one giant sheet.

I think this has always been present in KiCad? Most of my designs are multi-sheet. I don't care much about the hierarchy, though — I have a top-level "TOC" page, which apart from a description and release notes for all versions contains links to all the sheets.

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

#83

Post by phkahler » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #47

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

Still in active development. I still haven't gotten around to trying it, shame on me. Maybe I'll wait for Version H: "What’s next For quite some time now, people have been asking for hierarchical schematics. About equally as long, I’ve been thinking off-and-on about how to best go about implementing it. Once I made up my mind, I went ahead and implemented it over the course of about a month. Even though the implement…

That guy does some amazing work. One thing Horizon needs IMHO is a larger development team to ensure it continues on its path.

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

#84

Post by TD-Linux » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 10:52 AM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #78

robomartin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I think the GP mostly answered it, but usually it's so that they are self-consistent with a set of design rules, and known to work. Every place I've done professional PCB work has had their own library.

I think this trend comes from exposure to really poor standard libraries - for example, I found Altium's libraries being especially inconsistent and weird (though it's been a few years since I've last used Altium).

I've personally found the KiCAD standard libraries to be very consistent and high quality in comparison (both the symbols and footprints), and have no problem using them on my own designs - in fact, if I have to make my own schematic symbol, I often reference the standard libraries' design rules when making it.

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

#85

Post by dotancohen » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 11:43 AM UTC

TD-Linux wrote: post #84

dotancohen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I think the GP mostly answered it, but usually it's so that they are self-consistent with a set of design rules, and known to work. Every place I've done professional PCB work has had their own library. I think this trend comes from exposure to really poor standard libraries - for example, I found Altium's libraries being especially inconsistent and weird (though it's been a few years since I've last used Altium). I'…

I see, thank you.

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

#86

Post by delfinom » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

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.

We have no dispute with the auto router.

1. It was written in Java. We do not have any java devs nor any interest in learning that language. Nobody else has stepped up, period. Most of us develop from professional experience and Java simply isn't part of that.

2. The autorouter was never embedded in KiCad due to being java. It was a command line utility. It's behavior and/or bugs varied as a result.

3. ***The absolute biggest issue.*** The autorouter has broken licensing status. The author of it was sued by his company for writing it on company time/knowledge/NDA and they claimed ownership of it. We cannot legally bundle it because it's copyright status is essentially disputed by a legal entity with piles of money. That author also disappeared when he got sued. Somebody attempted to fork it but they also gave up years ago because autorouters are.....

4. Autorouters are a beast of work and a full time job in of themselves to ensure they work. You can create simple solvers but they quickly break down once you add more and more traces and constraints. There are even companies that offer autorouting services now as an example of just how much work is involved in doing it right.

We decided our time is best spent elsewhere. We wouldn't stop someone if they came up and developed a new autorouter from scratch to contribute, but nobody has and we have limited man power. We are a niche group. We are Electrical Engineering backgrounded using our intense experience and industry connections to write a tool for ourselves and others. This is well beyond the interests of comp sci code monkeys to get manpower as easily as leftpad on github ;)

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

#87

Post by fullstop » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

bruckie wrote: post #59

fullstop wrote: post #12

I used KiCad 5 design some PCBs which are being shipped to me now. I've never done this before, and it was a fantastic experience after I went through a few tutorials on how to actually use it. I look forward to using KiCad 6!

For anyone else interested, I found this tutorial really useful for learning to create a schematic and lay out a PCB with Kicad, then export it for manufacturing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5phi3nT8OU . I created a set of small boards and had them SMT-assembled for (the other stuff on his channel is good, too)

For me, the most useful thing was learning the hotkeys. I struggled adding vias for longer than I'd care to admit.

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

#88

Post by delfinom » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

crsn wrote: post #56

As a data scientist/machine learning engineer, I read "EDA" as "Exploratory Data Analysis" [0] and was amused (if let down) when I clicked through. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_data_analysis

Yea, data science can fuck off trying to steal the EDA term used for decades for electrical engineering ;)

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

#89

Post by delfinom » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #76

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 an…

Nah, GPL is still shitty, it's enforcement is a joke and I have numerous examples of large companies abusing it even now. And it doesn't stop the developer buyout and forks scenario, just makes the fork inconvenient.

We poisoned pilled KiCad even further by getting it trademarked under the Linux Foundation. That's a whole extra layer of protection.

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

#90

Post by hyperman1 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

topspin wrote: post #18

S-expression schematics. Nice. There are entire markup disciplines that probably should have just been s-expressions and saved a few billion people hours.

I have a bit of mixed feelings here:. If it was JSON or XML, you could use existing tooling to work with the format. Say, using jq to extract metadata from a full folder of kicad files or generate files or components from a shell script.

Sexp's are a step forward, but they are still only half of a standard. Charsets and escaping rules need to be defined, etc..