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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

#91

Post by gaze »

namibj wrote: post #61
gaze wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah TopoR is really impressive. The thing is, I don't find that the hard problem is just the routing -- it's the combination of the placement and the routing. I find that I place with some idea of how I want to do the routing. I really haven't met any professional PCB designers that use the autorouter. I can see how it might have been useful several decades ago with low speed designs that had massive memory busses. Like if you were routing an arcade machine board or something. But now? Signal integrity is very important and everything is serial.

If I need something more complex very quickly, I usually do some combination of hot gluing and cutting up dev boards and dead-bugging.

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

#92

Post by xondono »

mhb wrote: post #48
xondono wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re seeing too much conspiracies. CAD is hard, and it’s very hard to displace the incumbents, for the same reason that is hard to change programming languages, people have too much tied up in the old option. Most of the free/open source alternatives were built by part providers (Mouser, Farnell,..). The objective was clear, if your CAD has direct links to your site, this will probably make you the default provider…

> it’s very hard to displace the incumbents I don't know how this fits into the narrative, but Protel, which started as an affordable, very good option continued to improve and is now Altium.

Altium/Protel is very much an incumbent with >30 years in the market

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

#93

Post by xondono »

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…

GPL is not a magic spell, the other open source alternatives didn’t disappear, they were rendered obsolete.

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

#94

Post by hulitu »

romwell wrote: post #42
xondono wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re seeing too much conspiracies. CAD is hard, and it’s very hard to displace the incumbents, for the same reason that is hard to change programming languages, people have too much tied up in the old option. Most of the free/open source alternatives were built by part providers (Mouser, Farnell,..). The objective was clear, if your CAD has direct links to your site, this will probably make you the default provider…

>You’re seeing too much conspiracies Nah fam, I'm seeing my favorite tools like Netfabb disappear and become subscription-only parts of the Autodesk ecosystem. CAD is not just EDA, or the niche that KiCAD occupies.

CAD is also Magic which is alive and well.

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

#95

Post by robomartin »

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?

> Why would somebody maintain their own library of symbols?

Adding to TD-Linux's answer...

Process variants can create situation where board reliability might be negatively affected by boilerplate PCB patterns. Yes, while things have gotten better over time, you cannot trust anything in any library without, at a minimum, a full check. And, frankly, if you are going to do that, you might as well create your own symbols and PCB patterns.

If you work in aerospace or anything where high reliability is a must, you simply cannot use stock PCB patterns. Everything has to be process qualified and tested. At the extremes you have thermal cycling and vibration testing. High acceleration can rip components right off PCB.

There are other considerations. For example, most library schematic symbols have pins arranged in some fashion that made sense to whoever did the work. This can easily lead to truly convoluted schematics that are the equivalent of spaghetti code. Arranging and spacing pins according to the design one is working on can result in very clean and easy to understand schematics. This can be especially true of analog electronics.

Another case is FPGA's. If you approach FPGA symbols in a generic per-bank style, you can end-up with, again, schematics that are a rats nest nobody can follow. If, on the other hand, you create symbols in the context of the design, things can be massively easier to work with and understand.

Yes, that means you don't use the same symbol for every design. We have created tools to manage this effortlessly. As we transition to KiCAD we are likely to port these over from Altium's VBA to Python and open source them.

Bottom line: The potential liability of delivering a design that fails because you used a third party library can be costly. People with experience have learned this is a false economy. It simply isn't worth the potential consequences, from having to redo boards to product failing in the field.

That said, for quick "non flight-qualified" prototypes and hobby projects, sure.

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

#96

Post by mhb »

xondono wrote: post #92
mhb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s very hard to displace the incumbents I don't know how this fits into the narrative, but Protel, which started as an affordable, very good option continued to improve and is now Altium.

Altium/Protel is very much an incumbent with >30 years in the market

That's the point. It demonstrates that, despite it being very hard to displace the incumbents, it has been done.

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

#97

Post by dotancohen »

robomartin wrote: post #95
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?

> Why would somebody maintain their own library of symbols? Adding to TD-Linux's answer... Process variants can create situation where board reliability might be negatively affected by boilerplate PCB patterns. Yes, while things have gotten better over time, you cannot trust anything in any library without, at a minimum, a full check. And, frankly, if you are going to do that, you might as well create your own symbol…

Interesting, thank you! Yes, I see how it depends on the field one is working in.
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