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Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling
I last needed EDA type tools in 2012. Since then, wherever I was employed, I only wrote software and the actual PCB production was handled by a different team.
I'm getting back into doing it all myself, and the tools I used to use (gEDA) are no longer in the repositories of my distros (debian-based).
What is being used these days to do circuit diagrams, PCB layout, etc? First prize would be something already in many repositories (I see a `lepton` tool which I will try out), but I will accept a second prize of FLOSS or consolation prizes of `free to download, but closed-source`).
TIA, I will read and consider all replies seriously.
- curiousfab 3y agoKiCad. It's very stable and offers features that some of the professional programs lack. Extensive part library built-in, and easy to extend. Under active development.
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoKicad is by far the best and most feature complete. I've used it to make dozens of boards.
- iancmceachern 3y agoIts kicad
- nairboon 3y agoThere is also LibrePCB: https://librepcb.org/ https://librepcb.org/
- jopsen 3y agoI haven't found a reason to try it yet, but: https://horizon-eda.org/ https://horizon-eda.org/ Or maybe KiCad.
- twarge 3y agoHorizon EDA is a much better tool than Kicad. It is extremely well written on a modern foundation and as a result it doesn’t need the giant list of bug fixes that kicad constantly receives. Library management is the most fundamental improvement over kicad. LibrePCB is also worthy of note and seems aimed at Eagle users. Also fundamentally more modern and solid than kicad.
- imtringued 3y agoI haven't used Kicad in years. I thought they improved significantly in that time span, while HorizonEDA was stagnating at it's admittedly very good level of quality. What I am missing from HorizonEDA is the ability to set constraints to signals/pads such as maximum and minimum current, voltage, frequency or setting impedance targets. There is also no easy way to do a simple static current FEM simulation on custom polygon shapes. You can already do this using a chain of four open source tools but it is a lot of manual steps.
- twarge 3y agoI am repelled by the notion that software requires a constant stream of tweaks to be healthy. If you look at the issues on GitHub, there are basically no open bugs there; it's all feature requests. You can set a net or net class to have a set of geometric constraints suitable for a particular impedance or current or voltage. This matches or surpasses the capability of every other EDA software that I've used. I also think it's unreasonable to ask EDA software for a full on FEM simulation. You wouldn't want to do that with the full board geometry anyhow.
- atoav 3y agoI am a long time user/contributer to horizon-eda. In fact I made their original landing page at https://horizon-eda.org https://horizon-eda.org and designed the logo. During that time I created roughly 10 finished (and working) projects using the software. The only downside compared to KiCAD is that the official parts library is smaller. But what is in there goes through a review process and is often verified by other builders. There are also fancy things like 3D views, length tuning, alternate footprints, board layouts consisting of multiple boards, ... If you are one of the people who has no problem creating their own footprints and always wanted to like KiCAD, but is driven insane by the UX, this one might be it.
- stavros 3y agoI know this is a bit of a useless comment, but doesn't only offering a Windows package prevent most people who want to use this from trying it? Horizon might be amazing, but if I can't run it on Linux, I've closed the tab.
- mmac_ 3y agoKicad is the best free EDA I've used and I know many others that use it. The active development and large community make it a no-brainer. I use Altium professionally ($$$) and I feel like Kicad could cover most of the boards I work on. FYI I've seen a few advanced PCB's done in Kicad successfully - just not sure how much manual calculations/work they had to do. Kicad + the cheap online PCB vendors are a killer combination.
- 533474 3y agoDo you have any example(s) of an advanced KiCAD board?
- cushychicken 3y agoKicad has a bunch of examples of boards made with Kicad on their homepage. Tons of stuff on par with a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black, with DRAM, eMMC, and PCIe routing, plus all the fine pitch placements for supporting circuitry. PMICs get dense in these applications.
- mntmn 3y agoI've made 2 laptops in KiCAD: https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform https://source.mnt.re/reform/pocket-reform https://source.mnt.re/reform/pocket-reform
- lovelearning 3y agoThis is the most awesome thing I've come across on HN in recent months if not years!
- ruslan 3y ago> Made With > KiCAD EDA > OpenSCAD > LUFA > Autodesk Fusion (Case parts) This is really awesome. Kudos for KiCAD and OpenSCAD.
- mr337 3y agoThat is impressive!
- v1ne 3y agoAutodesk EAGLE (formerly CadSoft) has a free tier (EAGLE Free) and it's a pretty decent layout program! I made numerous layouts with the standard license when it was still owend by Cadsoft and I found it comparably easy to use. I found a lot of the EDA software had either a very steep learning curve at the start or catered to "professional" workflows such as having different persons that do the schematic and layout that don't matter to me at home. For example, Eagle offered forward-and-backward connection between schematic and layout for a long time, whereas Kicad didn't. Meaning if I made a change in the schematic, I had to jump through hoops to get a netlist change into my schematic. EAGLE was much more focused on the workflow of one person doing the schematic and layout, I felt. Much closer to "getting the PCB layout done", with an easy parts editor to create custom parts etc. The flipside is that it breaks down quickly when you have more than 2 layers, I think. I don't remember any easy tools to e.g. route waveguides or equalize pairs of differential tracks. But these days, give Kicad a try. Since CERN poured resources into it, it became a very capable EDA tool.
- kayson 3y agoI would stay away from Eagle. It's definitely a great tool, and it's used by a lot of small business hacker types like Sparkfun, but the licensing is a disaster since it was bought by Autodesk.
- barbacoa 3y agoAnother reason to stay away from Eagle; Autodesk announced they are killing off the product. https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/future-of-autodesk-eagle-fusion-360-electronics/ https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/future-of-...
- tommiegannert 3y agoIf you're sending things to JLCPCB for manufacturing, easyeda.com is useful. I find the editor somewhat annoying, but the component library is huge, and you can easily order PCBs from JLCPCB and components from LCSC. (They're all the same organization.) I personally prefer KiCAD, but use easyeda.com when I don't have KiCAD around. The new nudge router in KiCAD is pretty nice.
- kayson 3y agoFor quick small boards, I don't think you can beat easyeda. They've got a built in community parts library which makes it super easy to whip something together. I made a little adapter to run RCA over ethernet and it took about 15min.
- sitzkrieg 3y agoeasyida and the jlcpcb offerings are good and unbeatable prices but i recommend them only for designs you are ok with considering public
- gte525u 3y agoThere is a python script[1] that pulls down LCSC parts as kicad symbols and footprints. [1] https://github.com/uPesy/easyeda2kicad.py https://github.com/uPesy/easyeda2kicad.py
- dvh 3y agoI recently did my first pcb in kicad and it was breeze. Not a single crash. It even has 3d view. Is in ubuntu repo. Manufactured PCB at jlcpcb and received 5 boards in 16 days for $4.10
- frankplow 3y agoKiCad is by far the best. It is not as powerful as commercial tools: a lot of its high frequency design tools are simple calculators, and so a lot of manual work is required where you would simply set constraints in other packages. It has a neat design rule scripting language which you can use to ensure your requirements are met though. I’ve done a couple boards with frequencies up to the UHF band and don’t think I’d want to go any higher in KiCad. That being said, for simple boards it’s plenty powerful.
- huppeldepup 3y agoup to the UHF band and don’t think I’d want to go any higher in KiCad Didn’t Michael Ossmann create the HackRF on Kicad?
- frankplow 3y agoYeah it’s certainly possible, it’s just personally I found it tedious.
- huppeldepup 3y agoah ok, I read it in the "I recommend" sense.
- junon 3y agoYou can do anything in kicad; altium isn't doing anything special to make something possible that's not possible in kicad. The problem is that it's exceedingly tedious to do in kicad some of the more advanced things that altium and others can do. Think C vs C++. Nothing C++ does is inherently impossible in C (in terms of observable side effects). For example, RAII is a one liner in C++. In C, it's two lines and some extra thought about control flow. Not impossible, just a bit more mental overhead.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- StarlaAtNight 3y agoFor any of you data folks out there: In this context EDA is Electronic Design Automation, not Exploratory Data Analysis
- wotwot42 3y agoThere's also https://horizon-eda.org/ https://horizon-eda.org/
- Tryanasorus 3y ago+1 Horizon is beautiful. The creator has also recently started working on a 3D modelling program (Dune3D) in the same style which I am very excited about.
- phkahler 3y ago>> The creator has also recently started working on a 3D modelling program (Dune3D) in the same style which I am very excited about. I kind of wish he talked to us about doing a version of Solvespace using OCCT instead, but he's got a lot of good ideas and it will be nice to see where he goes with Dune3D. I can see its Solvespace roots! Solvespace NURBS shells are completely separate from the sketch entities and constraints, so there's a fairly small API surface to make the change. That separation is also one of the issues preventing a fillet tool though.
- atoav 3y agoUsed horizon for many projects so far. Works perfectly fine and the UI is much better than KiCADs
- iAkashPaul 3y agoAnyone got any recommendations for FOSS Generative Design instead of F360.
- gunalx 3y agoFreecad for the graphical interface openscad, CadQuery or similar for a scripted generative design language. i guess webcad (jsketcher ) or dune are options, but i have nothing to say about them.
- regularfry 3y agoOften when people talk about generative design what they mean is topology optimisation. CadQuery isn't the tool for that. I've seen basic 2d topology optimisation in FreeCAD, but nothing approaching what some of the paid tooling can do.
- gremlinunderway 3y agodamn acronyms. I was genuinely excited to learn about more Exploratory Data Analysis tools.
- junon 3y agoKicad. Went from zero to fully working, quite complex digital board with it. A few tips: Use ultra librarian for parts when possible. They're usually better. Making your own footprints is a pain but necessary sometimes. FreeCAD is another OSS tool that also has its rough edges but is good enough. Use the sketcher tool and the datasheet to build up all the lines you'd need (including for cutouts, pads, silkscreen, etc), export as DXF, then import into KiCad's footprint editor. You can then switch layers for each line or use them to position pads such that they're fully accurate and you don't have to think too hard about offsets and whatever. Find (or make!) a good part manager if you're populating your own boards. I wrote some simple REPL around sqlite in Node.js for working with parts, and have a cheapo barcode scanner from Amazon to work with mouser IDs and the like to "check out" parts as I populate. In hindsight, I wish I had written it in Python. I also use this tool to convert the BOM kicad exports into a more reasonable format for buying. I also subtract away the parts in the DB I already have so I don't keep buying extras of stuff. Just an idea.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoIt’s great that FreeCAD is FOSS and it is good for simple enough use cases but I had to ditch it for fusion 360 for my use case, it just can’t do things I needed for injection molding well like negatives and chamfers and other subtle angular operations of parts. So take into consideration what you’re doing. IMO for something precise like this use case it may not be good enough
- MegaDeKay 3y agoThere is some good work going into FreeCAD right now. They're putting more structure into the project and working on some much needed fixes that will be big QOL improvements. A fix to the topological naming problem is due in the next release, for example. https://ondsel.com/blog/ondsel-365/ https://ondsel.com/blog/ondsel-365/
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoThis is awesome but the fundamental problem with FreeCAD is that it uses OCCT under the hood which has some pretty fundamental flaws. Unfortunately one does not simply write or replace a geometry kernel so there’s not really a solution on the horizon for a lot of stuff that OCCT doesn’t do well. There have been some efforts at a newer better open source geometry kernel but writing a geometry kernel that supports everything a 3D modeler needs is a massive undertaking Just to put a very simple use case that is common that I ran into that made me switch to fusion 360. I was designing an enclosure and needed to add a few things that make the part pop out of the mold easier. One example is if you have a box you might build the floor of the box meeting the wall with a 90 degree angle. But a mold actually wants that at a 91 ish degree angle else it “hugs” the inside of the mold as the plastic contracts. Changing this is a trivial 2 button operation in fusion 360. Doing it in freecad is, uh, basically the opposite of that
- highdeserthackr 3y agoFollowing. Inventor of OrCAD CIS (Component Information System) here. Still using an old version of Eagle (7.3.0) before it got neutered by Autodesk. I mostly just use schematic capture for documentation, rarely layout an actual pcb, and just use a solderable breadboard for hobby projects. Kicad has been on my list to check out, comments here most appreciated. Didn't know about Horizon, which also sounds worthy.
- mips_r4300i 3y agoRan across Orcad CIS for the first time last week while downloading symbol files from Intel/Altera. Trying to convert to Altium. Is there any documentation that exists for sucking out symbol info or do I need a full install of Orcad?
- highdeserthackr 3y agoAltium claims to have a translator that covers symbols: https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/orcad-import https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/orcad-i...
- antoniuschan99 3y agoAside from KiCad you can also look at EasyEda (think it’s from jlc), I’m still using diptrace (haven’t migrated to kiCad yet :$)
- ruslan 3y agoKiCAD. Routing 10 layer PCB with 2000 pin BGA and LPDDR4 was easy. Also I desined a fully OSHW FPGA board in KiCAD (RPi style): https://github.com/Fabmicro-LLC/Karnix_ASB-254 https://github.com/Fabmicro-LLC/Karnix_ASB-254
- jmpz 3y agoI've been curious to check out https://www.flux.ai/ https://www.flux.ai/, but haven't played with it much yet.
- mrWiz 3y agoKicad, by a mile. I use Allegro professionally and would drop it for Kicad in a heartbeat if I could convince my employer to make the switch.
- linker3000 3y agohttps://old.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/software https://old.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/software