11 ms·

Probably the exception is Blender, which is a big, complex GUI with gobs of features and is very compétitive.

anchpop 5y ago
true, why is blender special? it was originally a closed source program with a small community that became open source later, but it’s evolved massively since then and become much more polished and easier to use, which virtually no open source project can say
- sokoloff 5y ago
  KiCAD is another package that I think is fairly competitive at this point. It’s not going to kill Altium, but it’s improved greatly in the last 3 years.
  - bsder 5y ago
    I actually disagree and think Altium will, in fact, be Victim #001 of KiCad. The question becomes: "Is Altium <n> thousand dollars better than KiCad?" And a lot of the time the answer will now be "No." I already split my designs about 50/50 between Altium and KiCad--and that's before KiCad 6.0 which is imminent (6.0RC2 exists right now). 1) KiCad has one killer feature: it's cross platform. I would argue that this will, over time, kill anything that isn't. Mostly because "open a VM in the cloud and do all your work there" is becoming really common. 2) PCB software, by and large, doesn't need new features. PCB software does need features that work. Altium is infuriating with not killing bugs and introducing new ones every release. 3) Altium and bunch are basically blocking access to libraries without a subscription fee. That's going to erase Altium for use by small people. This drives me up a tree because it prevents me from sharing a design. KiCad will slowly but surely eat everything at the bottom and then start upwards--there's just simply no other decent alternative in the space.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      There is no design that I’ll ever do that KiCAD can’t handle. I get the sense that most of the commercial complex PCB (motherboards, phones, etc) are likely to stay Altium for a good long while. Is that not the case?
      - bsder 5y ago
        Those designs probably aren't in Altium. They're probably in something like Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro. This is why I suggest that Altium is likely to be the first victim. The non-Altium proprietary systems have a lot of legacy to hold them in place (like parts database integration across your company). In addition, they do have some very advanced features around routing matched memory buses and the like. If, however, your design doesn't need that, KiCad will cover you, and Altium won't bring anything you need to the table.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      KiCad's library management isn't powerful enough for (most) commercial work. It has a good foundation but there is too much critical functionality that is not implemented yet.
      - floatboth 5y ago
        I'm not sure if/how this is improved in KiCad 6 but from the KiCad 5 tutorials I've seen, "manually match symbols to footprints" was its approach to library management :/ I'm learning PCB design with https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon instead — and here library (pool) management comes first. You actually place full "parts" (that associate symbols and footprints and other metadata) onto schematics — and if you don't want to decide on a particular model number, you can still place a "base" part (e.g. "generic 5k resistor") and change it later. Oh, and the schematic editor actually edits nets, rather than what KiCad does (seemingly just a basic CAD drawing that gets analyzed into a netlist as a very separate explicit step).
        5y ago

true, why is blender special? it was originally a closed source program with a small community that became open source later, but it’s evolved massively since then and become much more polished and easier to use, which virtually no open source project can say

sokoloff 5y ago
KiCAD is another package that I think is fairly competitive at this point. It’s not going to kill Altium, but it’s improved greatly in the last 3 years.
- bsder 5y ago
  I actually disagree and think Altium will, in fact, be Victim #001 of KiCad. The question becomes: "Is Altium <n> thousand dollars better than KiCad?" And a lot of the time the answer will now be "No." I already split my designs about 50/50 between Altium and KiCad--and that's before KiCad 6.0 which is imminent (6.0RC2 exists right now). 1) KiCad has one killer feature: it's cross platform. I would argue that this will, over time, kill anything that isn't. Mostly because "open a VM in the cloud and do all your work there" is becoming really common. 2) PCB software, by and large, doesn't need new features. PCB software does need features that work. Altium is infuriating with not killing bugs and introducing new ones every release. 3) Altium and bunch are basically blocking access to libraries without a subscription fee. That's going to erase Altium for use by small people. This drives me up a tree because it prevents me from sharing a design. KiCad will slowly but surely eat everything at the bottom and then start upwards--there's just simply no other decent alternative in the space.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    There is no design that I’ll ever do that KiCAD can’t handle. I get the sense that most of the commercial complex PCB (motherboards, phones, etc) are likely to stay Altium for a good long while. Is that not the case?
    - bsder 5y ago
      Those designs probably aren't in Altium. They're probably in something like Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro. This is why I suggest that Altium is likely to be the first victim. The non-Altium proprietary systems have a lot of legacy to hold them in place (like parts database integration across your company). In addition, they do have some very advanced features around routing matched memory buses and the like. If, however, your design doesn't need that, KiCad will cover you, and Altium won't bring anything you need to the table.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    KiCad's library management isn't powerful enough for (most) commercial work. It has a good foundation but there is too much critical functionality that is not implemented yet.
    - floatboth 5y ago
      I'm not sure if/how this is improved in KiCad 6 but from the KiCad 5 tutorials I've seen, "manually match symbols to footprints" was its approach to library management :/ I'm learning PCB design with https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon instead — and here library (pool) management comes first. You actually place full "parts" (that associate symbols and footprints and other metadata) onto schematics — and if you don't want to decide on a particular model number, you can still place a "base" part (e.g. "generic 5k resistor") and change it later. Oh, and the schematic editor actually edits nets, rather than what KiCad does (seemingly just a basic CAD drawing that gets analyzed into a netlist as a very separate explicit step).
      - 5y ago