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cushychicken

If you think Altium is bad, you've never used Orcad.

If you think Orcad is good, you've never used Eagle.

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Tell me if I got this right. Altium is better then Orcad, and Eagle is better then Orcad.

So which one is better between Altium and Eagle?

No comparison, Altium is much better than Eagle, especially for professional work. I haven't used Orcad in a long time, but back then, Orcad was much better than Altium. Nowadays, Orcad is priced beyond mortals, Altium is relatively affordable, and Eagle is cheap. Kicad is free and considered equivalent to Eagle.

> Altium is relatively affordable, and Eagle is cheap

For reference Altium is still around $7500 plus $1500 per year for updates and Eagle without board restrictions is $1600.

Whoops, I meant to imply that Orcad is better than Eagle.

I really just find it hard to do hobby projects in Eagle because I'm so used to Orcad's workflow by now. All the shortcuts are different. :(

If you think eagle is good, you've never used KiCad.

Seriously, I love KiCAD. So much better than eagle, and open source.

I'd love a recommendation for a good KiCad intro tutorial. I tried to just hack through learning it once and I couldn't pick it up. Any suggestions?

I used a YouTube playlist[0] to get the basics down, goes from installing KiCad through to soldering a finished board.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2022BX6Eso532xqrUxD...

Thank you! I'll check this out!

Edit: ...is that Chris Gammell? How did I not know this was a thing he made?

He became something of a huge KiCad evangelist there a while back. I've heard that this list and Contextual Electronics are pretty good. I think he still works for parts.io too.

For home use, I use Diptrace. Bad name, maybe, but excellent software and the price is right.

Somewhat amazing that when I left hardware design more than 20 years ago we were using Orcad (Eagle existed too iirr).

What's the learning curve on newer tools for someone who has been using EAGLE for years? I'm scared of change.

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