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KiCAD is not bad but I definitely file under the category of software for people who like screwing around with software. If you’re making boards in your kitchen
by romed 8y ago
KiCAD is not bad but I definitely file under the category of software for people who like screwing around with software. If you’re making boards in your kitchen then the free edition of Eagle will be more than satisfactory, and it comes with decades worth of user-contributed libraries and scripts.
- gh02t 8y agoDepends on your taste. Personally, I hate Eagle and find it really painful to use. KiCAD has rough spots, but I like its workflow a lot more. Plus Eagle's free version restrictions are pretty tight, 80 cm^2 and 2 schematic sheets are quite restrictive even for a hobbyist. I don't begrudge people who use it, but I genuinely prefer KiCAD. And if you're going to pay for a license for your EDA software, I think there are better options as well (OrCAD). Regarding libraries, in the hobby community Eagle has lost a lot of momentum in the past couple of years. KiCAD is now what you see a lot of makers releasing libraries and stuff for.
- romed 8y agoYeah I’ve noticed a preference among the library authors for kicad-compatible releases. That’s fine with me. I consider it analogous to the situation between clang and GCC. All the compiler people are working on clang these days. But GCC is still the better compiler, through the sheer mass of accumulated contributions. Someday the new thing will surpass the old thing.
- setquk 8y agoI use kicad because the moment Eagle asks me to sign into my Autodesk account I’m done with it.