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Kicad 6: new feature review for open source EDA tool
- gaze 5y agoI love KiCad. At this point the only thing missing for me is repeated subcircuit layout in PCB. There’s a nice plug-in for it but I really want to see it integrated. I’m sure it’s coming soon.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoThis 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 scared and inundated the standards effort with people whose job was to derail the effort. They were successful. In the years following, 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. That KiCAD has lasted this long is pretty cool. I suspect it has enough momentum that it cannot be stopped now but I'm still expecting interference from the big CAD vendor types.
- xondono 5y agoYou’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 was a good plan, until they realized how hard CAD really is. After burning tones of cash, they sold them for pennies on the dollar to the only people that wanted them, companies like Autodesk that think they can make them financially viable. I’ve been waiting for this release for quite some time, KiCAD is powerful enough, but I found KiCAD 5 very non-ergonomic, and supposedly KiCAD 6 has a better UI.
- zibzab 5y agoI think kicad 5 was meant to fix the library mess while kicad 6 is supposed to focus on UX. It was sold to me as "what blender did last time", which is music to my ears.
- aidenn0 5y agoAutodesk has a long history of buying up competitors that make cheaper products, going back to the MS-DOS days.
- romwell 5y ago>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.
- hulitu 5y agoCAD is also Magic which is alive and well.
- mhb 5y ago> 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.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoI think the simpler explanation is that good PCB CAD tools are extremely difficult and require a lot of developer effort. KiCAD is very good for an open-source tool that can produce basic PCBs. However, modern paid CAD tools are on a different level entirely. 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. KiCAD has recently reached a point where I feel like I can execute most of the designs I want with enough effort expenditure, but the paid tools still make certain tasks much faster and easier.
- lmilcin 5y agoI am amateur EE. My boards aren't very complicated but with exception of RF stuff (which I just don't understand) contain most of the interesting stuff: typically one or more STM32s below 200MHz, some flash, sensors, external interfaces like USB, display, some high power (>20A) stuff, some very sensitive analog stuff, etc. I have even recently started including my own SMPS (for lower power things). Kicad is all I need and probably will ever need. I get that better tools could help do some stuff but, realistically, great majority of work is outside of kicad (like learning, searching for parts, debugging, etc.) Even within kicad I spent most of the time thinking and tinkering with the schematics. So, according to Amdahl's law, there is very little I can gain upgrading Kicad to something else assuming it actually could make me more productive. If you are pro and you can do that other stuff quickly and efficiently and EDA is majority of your work then, maybe the calculation is different. But I just can't imagine an amateur could benefit a lot.
- taf2 5y ago"although this particular article could probably be edited down to 50% of its size without losing any information :-)." Reminds of me of the time a friend and I were working on copy for a marketing site (we're both engineers) and we started out with a long sentence and kept removing words until we had just one word... like "box" or "apple" or something like that when originally it was like as long as my comment...
- ChuckMcM 5y agoWhen I was writing a column for JavaWorld I had an editor who was great, she would mark up my column with things like "You can strike this whole paragraph, we get it already." She was really awesome to work with.
- dotancohen 5y ago> 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 and social attacks.
- xondono 5y agoGPL is not a magic spell, the other open source alternatives didn’t disappear, they were rendered obsolete.
- delfinom 5y agoNah, GPL is still shitty, it's enforcement is a joke and I have numerous examples of large companies abusing it even now. And it doesn't stop the developer buyout and forks scenario, just makes the fork inconvenient. We poisoned pilled KiCad even further by getting it trademarked under the Linux Foundation. That's a whole extra layer of protection.
- Animats 5y agoI was a KiCAD user until they dropped support for the auto-router. They apparently had some dispute with the developer of the auto-router, and took out auto-router integration. (Yeah, there's some hack to make it still work, maybe.) I have an old board I'd like to revise slightly, but it's too much work and risk to convert to the new "interactive" (i.e. manual) routing system.
- formerly_proven 5y agoAs you say, it's interactive (with push and shove routing), not manual. Manual routing is what e.g. EAGLE had for most of its life, where you have to draw every single piece of a trace manually and every conflict meant removing (ripping up) the already routed tracks.
- the-dude 5y agoWas the autorouter ever embedded into KiCAD? According to this : https://freerouting.org/freerouting/using-with-kicad https://freerouting.org/freerouting/using-with-kicad it should still work as it did long time ago. What I do remember is that the author of freerouting.org was harassed by his (former?) employer.
- zibzab 5y agoI have manufactured a lot of boards with kicad, and have used the auto router exactly once. You can still use the old auto router, you just have to do it manually (export, route, import).
- roland35 5y agoIsn't there still the follow-me router? I find that more convenient than auto routing since I generally have an idea of where I want to route, but it's nice having to computer work out the details
- amelius 5y agoI've never worked with the auto-router, but personally I think placement is giving me the most headaches.
- dang 5y agoSome past threads, for the curious: Real-time Netlisting in KiCad [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27367414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27367414 - June 2021 (27 comments) Making a Timelapse of your PCB design in KiCad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22355847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22355847 - Feb 2020 (9 comments) KiCad Joins Linux Foundation to Advance Electronic Design Automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21619542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21619542 - Nov 2019 (49 comments) Why open hardware needs open software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21388220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21388220 - Oct 2019 (29 comments) KiCad 5.1.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19456152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19456152 - March 2019 (35 comments) Start with Kicad – Schematic Diagram - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18969124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18969124 - Jan 2019 (2 comments) KiCad 5 – A New Generation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594677 - July 2018 (2 comments) Convert your KiCAD boards into nice looking 2D pinout diagrams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14122958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14122958 - April 2017 (1 comment) How to translate your Eagle libraries to KiCad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573567 - Feb 2017 (1 comment) KiCad: A commitment to freedom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12713089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12713089 - Oct 2016 (83 comments) Tutorial On Designing/Building A PCB (Using FOSS) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11670498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11670498 - May 2016 (41 comments) KiCad 4.0.0 is Out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10676514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10676514 - Dec 2015 (37 comments) Design for Assembly in KiCad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399815 - Oct 2014 (11 comments) KiCad videos released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8153324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8153324 - Aug 2014 (10 comments) KiCAD a Free and Open Source EDA Tool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315852 - Sept 2008 (1 comment)
- fullstop 5y agoI used KiCad 5 design some PCBs which are being shipped to me now. I've never done this before, and it was a fantastic experience after I went through a few tutorials on how to actually use it. I look forward to using KiCad 6!
- bruckie 5y agoFor anyone else interested, I found this tutorial really useful for learning to create a schematic and lay out a PCB with Kicad, then export it for manufacturing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5phi3nT8OU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5phi3nT8OU. I created a set of small boards and had them SMT-assembled for <$100 shipped. Tools and services for hobbyists have come a long way in the past decade or so. (the other stuff on his channel is good, too)
- fullstop 5y agoFor me, the most useful thing was learning the hotkeys. I struggled adding vias for longer than I'd care to admit.
- amelius 5y agoNot to distract from the topic, but I was just wondering: how is HorizonEDA doing these days? Can KiCAD learn from this project? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062174
- jpm_sd 5y agoStill in active development. I still haven't gotten around to trying it, shame on me. Maybe I'll wait for Version H: "What’s next For quite some time now, people have been asking for hierarchical schematics. About equally as long, I’ve been thinking off-and-on about how to best go about implementing it. Once I made up my mind, I went ahead and implemented it over the course of about a month. Even though the implementation is mostly done by now, I decided to not include it into this release so it receives some more testing by a wider audience. Apart from that, this results in version “H” bringing support for hierarchical schematics." https://blog.horizon-eda.org/progress/2021/09/06/progress-2021-06-08.html https://blog.horizon-eda.org/progress/2021/09/06/progress-20...
- phkahler 5y agoThat guy does some amazing work. One thing Horizon needs IMHO is a larger development team to ensure it continues on its path.
- antattack 5y agoHorizon is great and all but it insists on using real parts for everything which would be ok if it had lcsc parts catalog which it does not.
- atoav 5y agoBut it uses json for parts. So scraping and just writing it to your library is a real option, especially when you fall back on existing parts. It can also import parts from kicad, although I didn't try that.
- 5y ago
- topspin 5y agoS-expression schematics. Nice. There are entire markup disciplines that probably should have just been s-expressions and saved a few billion people hours.
- jhallenworld 5y agoThis is not a new idea: EDIF has been around for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDIF At least for netlists, it is a popular format.
- hyperman1 5y agoI have a bit of mixed feelings here:. If it was JSON or XML, you could use existing tooling to work with the format. Say, using jq to extract metadata from a full folder of kicad files or generate files or components from a shell script. Sexp's are a step forward, but they are still only half of a standard. Charsets and escaping rules need to be defined, etc..
- rutierut 5y agoKiCAD 5 was the point where it got good enough for the people wanting to switch to do so. Let's hope this release makes people not looking to switch want to so. Some of the improvements look universally great (especially sweet & simple ones like the ratsnest improvement) others will slightly alienate the current users but hopefully make the program feel more familiar to first time users.
- prionassembly 5y agoWhen I read "EDA" I think "exploratory data analysis".
- dagw 5y agoExploratory data analysis is much of what I do in my day job and I've never heard it called EDA.
- stargrazer 5y agoElectronic Design Automation
- dagw 5y agoYea, that's what I meant. Even as someone who works with Exploratory Data Analysis, I've never heard EDA used outside the context of Electronics.
- rkagerer 5y agoI tried KiCAD out a few years ago but abandoned it because you couldn't move components around easily without breaking the connected wires. IIRC there was "G" shortcut to do it but the pathing was so poor as to not be worthwhile. Has that gotten better in recent versions and it is worth another go?
- zbrozek 5y agoHuh, interesting. I disable that feature in Altium because I always want to break the connections when moving components. I will sometimes use the move-without-break tool in LTspice for two-terminal parts just to slide them in one direction a little bit to avoid text collisions.
- DominoTree 5y agoThe new push-and-shove router in 6 makes it way easier
- m0zg 5y agoTwo features I miss: 1. Ability to produce several PCB layouts from the same schematic (e.g. right-to-left and left-to-right, I needed this a couple of times to accommodate different chassis) 2. Ability to have "outboard" circuit fragments (i.e. a set of panel mounted pots interconnected with wires, or a sub-board that's logically a part of the same circuit). Neither of which seems to be there, unless the review forgot to mention them. Unfortunate, but still there's a significant number of updates that make upgrading worthwhile once the release stabilizes.
- formerly_proven 5y ago2.) is there for individual components (prefix reference with #), but not for schematics. It would be pretty neat though if you could use hierarchical sheets for whole-system design that way, though. Note that you can have multiple PCBs in one PCB file. Kicad doesn't really care.
- m0zg 5y agoIt's less useful for individual components - I can already represent those with pads without affecting readability of the schematic too much. But I sometimes would like to carve out a chunk of stuff onto a separate board, and connect it with, say, a ribbon cable, yet keep it on the same schematic sheet, or at least within the same project. That is not doable in KiCAD 5 at least.
- kuon 5y agoI agree, but the new S-Expr based format means it is way easier to manipulate the files, and maybe we can see third party solutions to fill this gap (at least for now).
- nixpulvis 5y ago> Eeschema files will be self-contained and will not depend on libraries. You will be able to publish and share these files and be sure that they will open properly on other people's KiCad 6 instances. Oh thank god. Now if only I could automatically import and upgrade all my old projects with missing libraries seemlessly... or can I?
- ilaksh 5y agoIs there a tool that can simulate some types of Kicad outputs? I mean something like do a PCB design for a simple circuit and then "run" or debug it in some way.
- mastax 5y agoFor analog electrical simulation there's SPICE. Kicad has a spice tool built in, but I haven't used it. It has some improvements in Kicad 6. I use LTSpice. For digital or systems simulation there's Renode. You have to recreate the system in Renode,there's no Kicad integration.
- ilaksh 5y agoMaybe with the new s-expressions it will be more feasible for someone to create an importer for Renode. Assuming enough annotations or whatever.
- PennRobotics 5y agoI would honestly manually recreate my simple PCB designs in Falstad's simulator[1] and use judgment to decide whether further thermal or high-freq analysis is necessary. I haven't looked in a few years, but you'll likely be hard-pressed to find an open source simulator that will give you analog, pure digital, "real" digital (logic with slew/noise/nonlinearities), electromagnetic, and thermal simulations plus usability. ANSYS is a well-established professional simulation suite and doesn't even really meet the usability threshold, in my opinion. [1] https://www.falstad.com/circuit/ https://www.falstad.com/circuit/
- nrclark 5y agoFor any Kicad devs reading this thread, are multi-sheet schematics on the roadmap at all? I work with some Orcad designers who view it as a necessary feature for the style of schematics that they draw. They feel like forced-hierarchical is arbitrary and high friction, but also don't want to throw a complex design onto one giant sheet.
- Futureshocked 5y agoYes, multi-sheet schematics works. It has since version 5.
- nrclark 5y agoNice, I didn't realize. All the tutorials and stuff out there all show a hierarchical schematic as the only way to get multi-sheet, instead of just a flat schematic with some stuff on one page and some stuff on another. I know the UI has changed a lot over the years.
- Futureshocked 5y agoOh, sorry, I may have mislead you by mistake. KiCad's multi-sheet schematic is hierarchical. There is one root sheet and beyond that the structure is flexible. Do you have an example multi-sheet schematic as you'd like to be able to have in KiCad?
- nrclark 5y agoSure thing. I can't share any of my employer's schematics, but here's one that's drafted in a similar style: https://digilent.com/reference/_media/reference/programmable-logic/arty-a7/arty_a7_sch.pdf https://digilent.com/reference/_media/reference/programmable... There's no hierarchy to the schematic. Pages are inserted/deleted in a freeform way, the same as you'd do with a Word document. Reference designators are in a global namespace, and so are net names. It feels like it's a pretty common drafting style, at least in my corner of the world. I've worked at two companies that use this style, and I also see it a fair amount on reference-designs like the linked example.
- cybrionic 5y agoI am learning Kicad myself but I had a friend who years ago had used kicad to design the board for his commercial pulse oximeter it was impressive then but now is worlds improved. This review is great for getting a jump start on the new features
- crsn 5y agoAs a data scientist/machine learning engineer, I read "EDA" as "Exploratory Data Analysis" [0] and was amused (if let down) when I clicked through. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_data_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_data_analysis
- delfinom 5y agoYea, data science can fuck off trying to steal the EDA term used for decades for electrical engineering ;)
- guerrilla 5y agoI'll have to try this out. I'm curious how parts creation/editing has changed. I just started using Fritzing again and the parts editing is working a lot better now. I feel like it finally has enough feautures to finish a project.