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Altium is extremely expensive though. I wonder what it would take to do the same in KiCAD.

by oytis 5y ago

dogma1138 5y ago
Altium offers their hacker/hobbyist circuit maker for free, it uses the same engine as Altium just lacks some of its advanced features and parts library. https://www.altium.com/circuitmaker https://www.altium.com/circuitmaker
- dieortin 5y ago
  I’m kind of getting started with PCB design, would you recommend circuitmaker over KiCad? As in, is the improvement worth going from free software to proprietary?
  - scld 5y ago
    I use Altium Designer almost exclusively now (Was OrCAD/PADS previously)......if I were starting over, I'd get much more into KiCAD. Higher learning curve but you can get legitimate professional-grade PCBs designed in it. The long-term answer is that you'll eventually want to try all of them. In my opinion, half of PCB layout is tool-agnostic and the other half is getting fast/proficient at a specific tool. When I moved to Altium, I knew that I wanted to "pour copper" to make a power plane, so I just had to google what the Altium equivalent was. The PCB concepts of layers/routing/grounding/clearance/vias/stackups and all that are universal, the terminology and shortcuts are just changed between tools.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - xondono 5y ago
    If you intend to work in the field, KiCAD has very little penetration as of this moment. It’s better than nothing, but mot companies will prefer people with experience in Altium. If you just want to start doing some projects, KiCAD is mature enough and you’ll find more tutorials and content.
  - mikeInAlaska 5y ago
    I absolutely love Diptrace. It has a free version with all libraries included. Over the years though I have progressively upgraded it to the "standard" level (which allows 6 layers and 1000 nodes) when they have sales. My own microcontroller designs with GPS and bluetooth, OLED displays, serial ports etc. have not passed 500 nodes.
  - contingencies 5y ago
    Definitely KiCad unless you need really high-end features immediately.
bberenberg 5y ago
My friends are making Flux[1] which is aimed at hobbyists and smaller teams. 1. https://www.flux.ai/ https://www.flux.ai/
- xor99 5y ago
  Nice thanks, checking this out and apart from some browser loading slowness this seems really cool. I'm stuck between booting up altium on my windows sbc and kicad on mac so this might be perfect. p.s. Crazyfrog! I remember hearing that first when I was like 11 haha, love it.
  - joshvm 5y ago
    It gets a bit of a bum rep these days, but I've always liked Eagle and it's cross-platform between Linux/Mac/Windows. Autodesk made a lot of changes which people didn't like, but to be honest the software was stagnating under CADSoft anyway. There was a time when the UI would change weekly, but it's a bit more stable now and developers in the forum are pretty responsive.

Altium is extremely expensive though. I wonder what it would take to do the same in KiCAD.

by oytis 5y ago

Altium is extremely expensive though. I wonder what it would take to do the same in KiCAD.

Altium offers their hacker/hobbyist circuit maker for free, it uses the same engine as Altium just lacks some of its advanced features and parts library. https://www.altium.com/circuitmaker https://www.altium.com/circuitmaker

dieortin 5y ago
I’m kind of getting started with PCB design, would you recommend circuitmaker over KiCad? As in, is the improvement worth going from free software to proprietary?
- scld 5y ago
  I use Altium Designer almost exclusively now (Was OrCAD/PADS previously)......if I were starting over, I'd get much more into KiCAD. Higher learning curve but you can get legitimate professional-grade PCBs designed in it. The long-term answer is that you'll eventually want to try all of them. In my opinion, half of PCB layout is tool-agnostic and the other half is getting fast/proficient at a specific tool. When I moved to Altium, I knew that I wanted to "pour copper" to make a power plane, so I just had to google what the Altium equivalent was. The PCB concepts of layers/routing/grounding/clearance/vias/stackups and all that are universal, the terminology and shortcuts are just changed between tools.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xondono 5y ago
  If you intend to work in the field, KiCAD has very little penetration as of this moment. It’s better than nothing, but mot companies will prefer people with experience in Altium. If you just want to start doing some projects, KiCAD is mature enough and you’ll find more tutorials and content.
- mikeInAlaska 5y ago
  I absolutely love Diptrace. It has a free version with all libraries included. Over the years though I have progressively upgraded it to the "standard" level (which allows 6 layers and 1000 nodes) when they have sales. My own microcontroller designs with GPS and bluetooth, OLED displays, serial ports etc. have not passed 500 nodes.
- contingencies 5y ago
  Definitely KiCad unless you need really high-end features immediately.

bberenberg 5y ago

My friends are making Flux[1] which is aimed at hobbyists and smaller teams. 1. https://www.flux.ai/ https://www.flux.ai/

xor99 5y ago
Nice thanks, checking this out and apart from some browser loading slowness this seems really cool. I'm stuck between booting up altium on my windows sbc and kicad on mac so this might be perfect. p.s. Crazyfrog! I remember hearing that first when I was like 11 haha, love it.
- joshvm 5y ago
  It gets a bit of a bum rep these days, but I've always liked Eagle and it's cross-platform between Linux/Mac/Windows. Autodesk made a lot of changes which people didn't like, but to be honest the software was stagnating under CADSoft anyway. There was a time when the UI would change weekly, but it's a bit more stable now and developers in the forum are pretty responsive.