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Comment by billylindeman | Hacker News Reader

For those interested in pcb design and you're not tied to FOSS I'd definitely recommend trying upverter.com. It's made loads of progress in the last few years and is probably the best / easiest to use layout software for beginners that I've come across.

I've worked with eagle, altium, and briefly KiCad but I can never get over the tediousness of using KiCad. I recently checked out upverter and after watching their tutorial was able to design an LCD adapter board from start to finish in ~2 hours.

Not trying to knock too hard on KiCad because it's great that we have an FOSS option, but if you're just into tinkering, upverter definitely has an easier learning curve and is pretty powerful. I always find that I want to spend my tinkering time actually getting my project designed instead of fighting with tooling.

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Upverter has all the standard trappings of proprietary SaaS businesses (see [1] for a flame-baity editorial).

I think KiCAD is awesome but the learning curve is steep, the interface is a little dated and it's hard to get started and/or share your schematics easily (e.g. online). This was one of the reasons why I wanted to like Upverter so much but the fact they were just another closed source business was a no-go for me.

Anyway, I created MeowCAD as an alternative [2]. It's free and open source [3] allowing you to do circuit design in your browser.

Sorry for the shameless self promotion.

[1] http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2011/09/21/editorial-upv...

[2] https://www.meowcad.com

[3] https://github.com/abetusk/www.meowcad.com

I tried Upverter a few weeks back, and thought their UI made some wacky choices, particularly where sliding connected components is involved. Lack of hotkeys also was a big shortcoming in my mind.

Eagle and KiCAD are no picnic to start with, but they do at least have some features that allow you to speed up your schematic capture/board layout.

I've always wondered if there wasn't a business to be had in doing part creation for Eagle/KiCAD as a service...

At one point I started thinking about setting up a business around KiCad with a ruggedized and supported distribution of the EDA, similar to how Red Hat works.

The name? Tin Hat.

I like the idea. Always wondered if there wasn't room for another EE CAD program. I always find myself frustrated by something when I use one.

Sorry for the rough edges - we care very deeply about our UI and spend a lot of our time trying to make this stuff better.

If you ever want to send me an email about UI weirdness in Upverter Im happy to share your feedback with the team here and see what we can do to fix it: zak@upverter.com.

As it turns out, I already did, and you already responded! Check your email from Feb 29 of this year. I haven't really gone back to the design I started as I got busy at work. I'll be sure to do so to see how the UI's changed since then.

Regarding a parts concierge for Kicad / Eagle. We've built this for Altium, you can see it here: https://upverter.com/features/concierge-altium/

We hadn't planned on supporting either KiCad or Eagle though. We didn't think there was much of a market. Im curious what you all think - do you think people would be willing to pay for parts creation as a service for either kicad or eagle? Also don't you think there would be a flame-war of the FOSS Kicad crowd vs. proprietary pay-to0use parts data?

Maybe. I don't love creating parts or footprints for Eagle. (I haven't used KiCAD enough to form an opinion.) I've never used Altium, but I've met plenty of people who love it and rave about it. Given that, I can see how it's a sensible market to pursue.

Ok, thanks!

KiCad definitely has a learning curve, which is why I made these and many other videos.

I have scaled back my arguments a bit, but I'm not a fan of the network connected, in-browser tools (wrote about it previously here: https://contextualelectronics.com/learning/simple-plane-expe...). I rather like the Upverter guys as well, I have had them on my podcast in the past: http://www.theamphour.com/the-amp-hour-163-ramiform-reciproc.... I'm sure to lose this argument (browser tools) over the long term, as I think more things are moving that way. But for now I prefer a localized version of my CAD software and the fact that it's FOSS is a bonus.

The thing I can't figure out is what happens if Upverter goes away at some point in the future? They have good exporters it seems, but there's no way to run the software without their servers AFAIK. I know people still running local copies of Protel99 (ie. all of China). Will that be possible with Upverter?

KiCAD does seem to have a tediousness problem. The tutorial shows a process for creating a new parts library which requires far too many steps - saving some random part into a new library to create it, telling the part designer about the new library, and starting from a blank part which has text in the way of what you're creating.

Also, moving something by holding "M" and dragging with the mouse seems a holdover from the DOS era. Of course, if you don't like that, you can remap the hotkeys. That's so open-source.

You don't have to hold 'm', you can just press it while hovering over a component. Just like you can in the schematic except the hotkey is 'g'. Or you can do in the OpenGL PCB renderer (but not the default renderer) with a simple click-and-drag. Oh and you can't undo/redo in track laying mode even if you're not laying a track.

The user interface is insanely fragmented, is what I'm getting at.

That's exactly what I was thinking - the footprint editor is horrible in that aspect.

You don't have to hold "M" to move, it picks up the component when pressing.

The shortcuts in general are not as nicely placed as Altium, e.g. Zoom-to-fit (Home) is very awkward. Sure you can change that, but stuff like this requires a lot of time and the setup will be incompatible with other people (and one might have to adapt it on the next update, etc.).

Electronic CAD is tedium, honestly. Even the expensive stuff I use at work is tedious, which is why we have a PCB layout department.

I haven't used KiCAD for several years, but in the past I used Rohrbacher's Quick Library Builder [0] to generate parts. Otherwise making parts is indeed a pain.

I enjoy KiCAD's single-key commands, though.

0: http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php

I've been using Upverter for a couple weeks on a series of boards and have mixed feelings. Broadly it seems to work fine though there are a few niggles here and there.

There are definitely some random bugs (DXF board outline import?) and they have been silent on the support forums for a few weeks.

For an open source option with a small learning curve I like Fritzing.

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