KiCad 6.0.0 Release Announcement | Hacker News Reader

KiCad 6.0.0 Release Announcement

kicad.org

55 pointsoctorian16 comments

Kind of amazing that they're finally working on usability. I did some free usability testing for them years ago and they buried their heads in the sand. Basically "it's fine, how dare you say that it's not intuitive". Very frustrating. I actually got a few private emails from people saying they agreed with me and found it frustrating too but didn't want to speak up on the mailing list.

Anyway fortunately I found that someone else has made an alternative PCB designer using the Kicad core engine (which is good) but with a sane UI. Well mostly sane. There are a few rough edges but it's waaaaaay easier to use than Kicad.

I recommend trying it: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon

I still haven't tried LibrePCB but Horizon is better than the other free options: Eagle (awful), GEDA (bad), Kicad (powerful but badly designed) and DesignSparkPCB (surprisingly decent).

I can’t say I’ve tried horizon but I might give it a shot. Library management in Kicad certainly was never a joy though functional

Unfortunately all ECAD fools are quite terrible when it comes to usability, even the commercial ones (Altium, Cadence, Mentor and their ilk). I expect that KiCad’s design is influenced with what’s “standard” in the industry as far the UX of ECAD tools is concerned.

I tested librepcb 1-2 years ago and manufactured a few boards with it.

It's extremely simple, but it works. Some parts work really well, such as component creation which is sort of kickads big weakness.

Overall, I liked it and prefer it to kicad for simpler designs.

It's a really good December for Free Software this year. Krita, Darktable, now Kicad. All top notch at what they do. Oh, was Blender this month too?!?

Can't wait to give this a try on the next project. I'm impressed with KiCad every time I use it. I can see why CERN likes it so much.

This looks fantastic, I happily began a monthly donation this year as I finally feel I have the funds to do so. Awesome project.

Is it on librepay? I try to avoid patron.

This is the step we were waiting for to start plotting a path to eventually abandon Altium Designer and migrate to KiCAD. We'll do that in 2022 with new projects as it becomes possible. Also starting to donate towards future KiCAD development.

Out of curiosity, what feature of Altium was holding you from switching to KiCad until now?

Sorry for the late reply.

It isn't so much about Altium features being that gating element. Given what was coming in KiCAD 6.0 I made the decision to make the transition with that version. Altium has turned into a complete mess. Bugs keep piling up. They release hot fixes and create new bugs. The company seems to have focused on attempting to migrate the user base to a cloud-based subscription model and, in my opinion, made a complete mess. They may have been targeting acquisition by Autodesk too, which never happened.

At $2000 per year per license, it is very hard to justify Altium Designer except for the very low percentage of boards that might require specialized features. KiCAD is good for probably somewhere in the range of 90% to 95% of the boards anyone makes. Let's put it this way: I've created multilayer gigahertz-range controlled-impedance boards with far worse tools than KiCAD...not sure what the $2K per year/per license gets me in the case of Altium Designer any more.

And the best part of this is that KiCAD will get better and better over time. We plan on contributing both financially and with development of either plugins and more. We all win.

I see this as the GIMP vs. Photoshop case. At some moment in time GIMP became good enough. After that it became better and better. For most users I think I can say that they would not feel like GIMP lacks anything important these days when compared to Photoshop. KiCAD is definitely headed in that direction.

Totally agreed with all your points above. I don't think a lot of EEs grasp yet how powerful KiCad 6 has become.

I have been mulling about creating a startup for helping EE teams transition from Altium to KiCad.

In essence, it would remove the friction points around maintaining both Altium and KiCad in the engineering teams. A small number of Altium seats would be used for the few boards that need specialized features, and everything else would be KiCad. Tons of $$$ would be saved.

Would love to chat about whether you think a service like above would make sense from your standpoint. My contact info is in the about field.

Thank you!

We abandoned Cadence three years go in favor of KiCAD. We miss online DRC a lot, now with 6.0 this issue has to be solved.

I fully expect companies with hundreds of seats of Altium Designer to very seriously consider KiCAD these days. I am having trouble seeing why this might be a bad decision.

Awesome. Been using 5.99 nightly builds for a long time. At last I can upgrade to the proper 6.0.0 release build.

Oh my... what a New Year/Christmas present from KiCAD team! Thank you all the developers!

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