Author here, ask me anything.
Starting from scratch also allowed me to trivially implement features that KiCad is missing, such as proper panelisation: https://blog.horizon-eda.org/progress/2020/04/05/progress-20...
Differential pair routing
Pin swapping... ie a differential pair where the pins can be reversed
Pin agnostic routing, ie a MCU or FPGA where it doesn't matter which pin is used
Incremental part placement, unlike kicad where all the footprints get dumped on the board in a big mess at the start
These are things that bother me most in kicad (it does have diff pair routing)
Thanks - looking forward to taking it for a spin
Yes, uses KiCad's push&shove router
> Pin swapping... ie a differential pair where the pins can be reversed
Not really, but swapping P/N in a diffpair is as easy as selecting nets in the schematic and using the "swap nets" tools.
> Pin agnostic routing, ie a MCU or FPGA where it doesn't matter which pin is used
Not really, but you can draw the connections in the board editor and backannotate them into the schematic: https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/backannotation....
> Incremental part placement, unlike kicad where all the footprints get dumped on the board in a big mess at the start
Yes, there's list showing all currently unplaced packages: https://imgur.com/ZrvRw46
How tightly integrated are the schematic editor and layout editor? Are they two separate programs like KiCad or can you eg. delete a component from the schematic and have it automatically removed from the PCB (but without nuking ALL non-schematic components from the PCB).
Definitely gonna give this one a try.
As far as I can tell, the development models also differ significantly: The LibrePCB devs seem to be focused on doing things the right way the first time such as having a proper operation-based undo/redo stack whereas horizon just stores a copy of the whole schematic/board for undo/redo. They also seem to focus more on simplicity for beginners rather than more advanced features such as length tuning and advanced design rules.
Putting development effort where I like enabled me do to the board for my master thesis https://github.com/carrotIndustries/x-band-tx/ (4 Layers, differential pairs, length-matched traces) in Horizon EDA only after about 2 years after the initial beginning of development.
We also talked about ways to increase collaboration between the two tools. A few ways I could see is:
* Router: Extracting the KiCad router into a separate repository / library so it can be used and developed by the different projects.
* Gerber Compatible Stroke fonts: Would be nice to have one font specification and implementation to be used for PCBs. LibrePCB started the FontoBene (https://github.com/fontobene) project to do just this, but currently LibrePCB is the only user of it.
* Regular exchange of ideas and domain specific problems / challenges and solutions. This already happened a few times at c3 and FOSDEM.
1. Does the schematic editor support multi-page schematics? Kicad's hierarchical-block approach always feels needlessly clunky to me.
2. Does the PCB editor support planes and copper pours?
3. Does the PCB editor have anything to help estimate a line/diffpair's characteristic impedance?
2. yes, including global or per-net rules for thermal relief, spacing etc. It warns you if nets have not been recalculated on Fabrication output. Adding them is simply: draw a polygon, right-click and "Add Plane", there you have to select any names net.
3. there is length tuning built in, but quite frankly I never had to use it, so I don't know if that is what you're looking for
re 3: I was more thinking about the plane spacing. Like say I'm making a board where I want to carry a high-speed clock signal. If it's single-ended, chances are the transmitter has a 50-ohm output impedance, and the receiver has a 50-ohm input impedance.To get the cleanest signal, I want my trace to have a 50-ohm _characteristic_ impedance (which is a function of the trace-width, distance to the closest plane layer, and PCB substrate's chemical properties).
Trying to model it accurately is a huge pain in the ass, and probably not worth attempting. But it could be nice to have a rule-checker that says something like "for your PCB dielectric constant of 4.7 with 10mil spacing to the nearest plane, your trace should be 18mil wide to get the desired impedance".
There are a bunch of these calculators out there - but it would be super cool to do some rudimentary constraints as DRC!
1. Does Horizon support an equivalent to the 'Variant Manager?' This is something that will allow variance of build outputs (different component populations, different schematic text, etc).
2. In the docs it seems to mention submitting parts to the default pool. If people submit parts to the pool are there style guides somewhere? (line widths, US vs EU resistor symbols, etc)
3. Looking at a random SMD footprint (SOT-363) it looks like the paste window is equal to the pads. Is there a way to set paste mask expansion like is done in Altium? (Automatically offset paste window from pad by some amount)
No, but there's been some discussion on it: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon/pull/347#issuecomment...
> 2. In the docs it seems to mention submitting parts to the default pool. If people submit parts to the pool are there style guides somewhere?
There's https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon-pool-convention, but that's still work in progress.
> 3. Is there a way to set paste mask expansion like is done in Altium?
Yes, you can set it globally in the board.
1. Opening up your first project is not straightforward. Instead of just opening with a blank project and letting you add a resistor, the app asks a lot of rather irritating and irrelevant questions (who cares who the "author" is at creation time, and couldn't it guess anyways?) that could be better decided later. Worst offense: the "create" button is grayed. As in: nope, you won't be able to use me until you answer all the useless trivia.
2. Horizon seems to cling to the "main window launches sub-apps" paradigm (much like kicad). This is a rather confusing UX workflow. At the very least, it clutters up your desktop. Why can't all sub-app live under one roof ? I mean even gimp has finally given up on the broken multiple top window idea ages ago.
3. Couldn't find any standard old-timey thru-hole parts in the default "pool": 2N2222, 2N3904 standard, LEDs. Not fashionable these days for serious work, but still very much in demand by the hobby crowd.
4. To place a part, it looks like you have to select the *exact* component you need right away. Why? . Why can't I just place a generic NPN in the diagram and then refine what part it'll actually be later on ?
5. The part browser : why so many search boxes ? I want a Google-style single search box that's smart enough to match what I'm saying to a given part. Finding a part shouldn't be like entering an SQL statement. Fuzzy matcher please.
6. Right-click on a component: a mile long menu, no "part properties" entry. When I finally locate the "change symbol" entry (in a sub-menu), it sends you to a subtly different UI than the part browser.
7. No navigation buttons in sight. Where's "Frame All", "Frame component"
8. Components are hard (near impossible) to just grab-and-move
[edit]: forgot to mention installation. On ubuntu, this was not exactly straightforward. Choice between installing a binary through flatpak (non-standard thing I don't have) or building from scratch (there went 30mn of my day). Almost made me open the windows laptop that's specifically reserved for running win-only crapware.
- Navigation Buttons: I proposed a solution here: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon/issues/119#issuecomme... This is part of the effort to add icons and toolbars to things that right now are reachable behind the spacebar menu
- Many TH (as well as audio/synthesizer-related) parts can be found in the work branch of my fork of the offical pool: https://github.com/atoav/horizon-pool/tree/work The offical library/pool only includes parts that have been checked by four eyes, so many parts are still open as Pull requests: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon-pool/pulls
As for the other points:
- on 1: Starting projects: for me it is only entering a project title and selecting a path, which is reasonable unless you are the type who wants to decide things like these in the end on saving.
- on 2: While I also like single window concepts better (with panes like Blender), I think having schematic, board and pool/library editors in seperate windows is kinda reasonable.
- on 4: You actually can. You are not forced to use existing parts if you use "Place component"
- on 6: Given how the whole thing works, such a thing like "Part properties" doesn't really make sense. In Horizon everything you place on the schematic is either a generic unit (E.g. "Two-terminal resistor") where you can enter a value or a existing part mapped to this generic unit (e.g. a "ERJ-6ENF2003"). This is (on purpose) different from how other EDA-tools do it, but in practise it works quite well. The point on the different assign window is something I'd like to have changed as well : )
- on 8: if you want to move something you have to use the move tool which you invoke by pressing the m key. You can also move things with the arrow keys.
Generally the UX paradigm of horizon is very much built around single key shortcuts or key sequences. And if you don't know the keys just press the spacebar and search for the command and it will tell you right there.
As for now the experience for power users is very fluid, but when it comes to installation, onboarding etc. the whole thing could use a lot of improvement (and are gladly beeing worked on).
Glib::Error: No GL implementation is available.
Couldn't find much to help me out figure out how to fix that issue, I assume it's some missing dependency but... where do I go from here?
Thanks for your work, as it currently stands I can't use it but I appreciate it exists nonetheless (I'm on a Mac).
Similarly, gtkmm is so much cleaner than Qt as a modern C++ library with none of the preprocessor / codegen quirks. Unfortunately it limits the platform reach, because GTK isn't really polished anywhere except Linux.
I raise a toast to the obsession with clean code and clean design. Sometimes "works on my machine" is the counter to "worse is better." At the same time, it's pretty inconvenient for me to use the software. Oh well.
Any plans for Mac downloads? And also, does its component model separate out schematic symbols and pin assignment (like DesignSpark PCB and I assume others) or are they inseparable (like KicadPCB)?
This is a good summery (with a nice graphic of the structure of an example part): https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pool-why.html
When producing a placement file for a PCB, can component part numbers be exported ? Neither Cadence, nor KiCAD stores components in their PCB files, only footprints, so part numbers cannot be easily accessed.
Why should I learn Horizon vs Kicad first, or vise versa?
- library management that makes sense (though is a bit more complex than KiCad's)
- clean and modern UI
- fast-paced development (if there's a suggestion, that makes sense to me, I'll implement it)
pro KiCad:
- large library of parts
- has been around for a long time, so for every problem you may encounter, there's likely a forum post or so that describes a solution/workaround
- larger community
It's still a pretty clunky workflow but it gets the job done. I really wish it was possible to have a point and click interface in the GUI for downloading individual new parts akin to a Linux package manager, but this is probably difficult to manage since there is no centralized distribution point for parts that are outside of the official libraries.