4 ms·
Basically kicad is great, until you need huge BGA packages, high speed bus traces, or DDR with its insane number of address/data lines that require some RF like
by bfrog 5y ago
Basically kicad is great, until you need huge BGA packages, high speed bus traces, or DDR with its insane number of address/data lines that require some RF like thinking in design.
The only real other option is Altium these days, which is like $10k as others have said. Maybe $7k if you really haggle.
- anfilt 5y agoI would say huge BGA packages are not much of a problem. KiCAD is plenty cable for laying out such a board and all the layers such dense chips require. Its more of an issue of high speed designs, you cant easily put a layout into a simulator or have it even simply just calculate impedance of a trace automatically as you try and place them. Instead you must manual put these details into a calculator. Its things like this that really slow down working on a complex design. Although, large BGAs generally imply some sort high speed elements in a design so equating packages with needed features is not unreasonable. Also component library management could be better. Although, for simple to moderate designs its definitely starting to give other professional software a run for their money.
- bfrog 5y agoI found when breaking out a bga package the constraints started acting poorly in either dog bone or via in pad in terms of spacing. As in, the board house specs were set and should have been ok, but kicad wouldn't allow traces or vias where it should have in some tight areas