4 ms·

LibrePCB: First release candidate

44 points by dbrgn 8y ago

dbrgn 8y ago
LibrePCB is a free EDA software to develop printed circuit boards. The focus is on a good library format and on ease of use. This first stable release candidate is the result of about five years of work!
aidenn0 8y ago
Can anyone comment on how this compares to KiCad? That's been the best open source EDA tool for me so far.
- dbrgn 8y ago
  U. Bruhin (the primary author of LibrePCB) answered this question on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9q4j1n/librepcb_first_release_candidate_is_out_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9q4j1n...): ---Quote:--- Hi! LibrePCB has some very new concepts, especially for library management. You should take a look at my talk at FOSDEM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34 (Slides: https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/attachments/slides/2267/export/events/attachments/cad_librepcb/slides/2267/librepcb_slides.pdf https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/...) As these are extremely different to KiCad's concepts, it would be very difficult to contribute that to KiCad because they need to provide backward compatibility. And KiCad already has a lot of legacy code, so it would become even worse when changing very fundamental concepts. It's very questionable if KiCad developers even would accept such fundamental changes - actually I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't agree with some of LibrePCB's concepts. So the only way was to create a completely new project. And LibrePCB 0.1.0 is only the beginning - I have many more ideas how an EDA tool should look like. With a standalone project I'm much more flexible to implement new features than if every feature would need to be contributed to KiCad.
di1eep 8y ago
I have been following this project on GitHub. Good to see that it's moving forward.
atoav 8y ago
It is very cool to see that lately there are some conceptually different counterparts to KiCad out there. I stumbled uppon LibrePCB at least a year ago, I can't wait to test it. Currently I am totally hooked on Horizon EDA (see: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon/wiki/Feature-overview https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon/wiki/Feature-ove...) which has a especially cool library managment IMO. I am curious how LibrePCB changed over that period

44 points by dbrgn 8y ago

LibrePCB is a free EDA software to develop printed circuit boards. The focus is on a good library format and on ease of use. This first stable release candidate is the result of about five years of work!

aidenn0 8y ago

Can anyone comment on how this compares to KiCad? That's been the best open source EDA tool for me so far.

dbrgn 8y ago
U. Bruhin (the primary author of LibrePCB) answered this question on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9q4j1n/librepcb_first_release_candidate_is_out_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9q4j1n...): ---Quote:--- Hi! LibrePCB has some very new concepts, especially for library management. You should take a look at my talk at FOSDEM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34 (Slides: https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/attachments/slides/2267/export/events/attachments/cad_librepcb/slides/2267/librepcb_slides.pdf https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/...) As these are extremely different to KiCad's concepts, it would be very difficult to contribute that to KiCad because they need to provide backward compatibility. And KiCad already has a lot of legacy code, so it would become even worse when changing very fundamental concepts. It's very questionable if KiCad developers even would accept such fundamental changes - actually I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't agree with some of LibrePCB's concepts. So the only way was to create a completely new project. And LibrePCB 0.1.0 is only the beginning - I have many more ideas how an EDA tool should look like. With a standalone project I'm much more flexible to implement new features than if every feature would need to be contributed to KiCad.

di1eep 8y ago

I have been following this project on GitHub. Good to see that it's moving forward.

atoav 8y ago

It is very cool to see that lately there are some conceptually different counterparts to KiCad out there. I stumbled uppon LibrePCB at least a year ago, I can't wait to test it. Currently I am totally hooked on Horizon EDA (see: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon/wiki/Feature-overview https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon/wiki/Feature-ove...) which has a especially cool library managment IMO. I am curious how LibrePCB changed over that period