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This 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

This 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 ago
You’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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Autodesk 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 ago
    CAD 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.
  - xondono 5y ago
    Altium/Protel is very much an incumbent with >30 years in the market
    - mhb 5y ago
      That's the point. It demonstrates that, despite it being very hard to displace the incumbents, it has been done.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I 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 ago
  I 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.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Do you use Spice from within Kicad?
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      No, I don't use Spice at all. I am calculating stuff by hand and/or building prototypes (especially when I can't calculate). Sometimes I use Matlab to visualize something I have calculated.
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 ago
  When 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 ago
  GPL is not a magic spell, the other open source alternatives didn’t disappear, they were rendered obsolete.
- delfinom 5y ago
  Nah, 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.

xondono 5y ago

You’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 ago
I 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 ago
Autodesk 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 ago
  CAD 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.
- xondono 5y ago
  Altium/Protel is very much an incumbent with >30 years in the market
  - mhb 5y ago
    That's the point. It demonstrates that, despite it being very hard to displace the incumbents, it has been done.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I 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 ago
I 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.
- amelius 5y ago
  Do you use Spice from within Kicad?
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    No, I don't use Spice at all. I am calculating stuff by hand and/or building prototypes (especially when I can't calculate). Sometimes I use Matlab to visualize something I have calculated.

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 ago
When 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 ago
GPL is not a magic spell, the other open source alternatives didn’t disappear, they were rendered obsolete.
delfinom 5y ago
Nah, 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.