Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder if you have used 6.x?

As soon as 6.0 was released we switched all future work to KiCad from Altium Designer. This after held licenses for AD going back to P-CAD days (2006, if I remember correctly) and previously using OrCAD and other professional tools. In short, I got sick and tired of sending thousands of dollars per year to Altium for them to burn the cash adding cloud-based functionality nobody I know wants at all. As a result, AD is just piled-on with bugs, issues, inconsistencies and you can pretty much expect every single update to deliver new bugs.

Anyhow, we've done several boards with KiCAD. We are not sorry at all that we made the change. Sure, it could be improved. The good news is, it will. Also, we are happy to financially contribute towards KiCad development because we know it will not go towards bullshit designed to try to sell the company to a larger company (Altium tried to attract Autodesk, and failed --ADSK probably saw the mess AD had become and backed away).

Anyhow, I think KiCad is good for probably 95%, if not 99%, of any board anyone might want to design. I go back to the early 80's for PCB design, which means that I have done some pretty advanced boards with tools that were far more primitive than KiCad.

As a side note, being able to use Python to drive aspects of KiCad is awesome. We've already created a number of useful utilities relevant to our work.

My experience exactly.

Kicad 6 feels a bit like a modernized version of Protel 99, with far less bugs too. So it is like Altium going back in time and choosing the correct development path instead of all the nonsense and disrespect for its users of the last two decades.

I have yet to meet anyone who was actually looking for a cloud-based EDA tool.

[EDIT: To clarify, what I am saying here is that, given all needs and desired features and functionality of EDA tools, I doubt anyone has been clamoring for a shift to the cloud because locally hosted software did not allow them to do the required work effectively.

For example: Had Altium devoted tens of millions of dollars towards the development of truly useful auto-routing, design tools and advanced library editing/maintenance tools this would have been a million times more valuable to every single one of their customers.]

I am sure there are use cases for this. However, the negatives, in my experience, by far outweigh the positives. We cannot have designs in the cloud. Period. We cannot subvert our PDM/PLM (Project Data Management/Project Lifecycle Management) to the whims of each software vendor.

Simple example: Today all of our PDM is handled through local directory structures where you can find and access design files for electrical, mechanical, optical, software and other engineering disciplines involved in product development. This also includes testing (for each of the above) and manufacturing (for each of the above). Now, multiply that by the equivalent to commits, release candidates, releases to manufacturing and product releases for, again, each of the above disciplines. Etc.

In short, physical hardware/software products are not distilled down to a single set of files. The idea of placing your EDA work on the cloud while everything else is stored and maintained in a local managed repository is nothing less than ludicrous. This is also the reason for which we use Solidworks instead of Fusion 360 (of which we own licenses but only use it in a very limited context).

The thought that a company like Altium would actually believe that non trivial companies would say "Oh, OK, we'll move all of our EDA work to the cloud now" is nothing less than ignorant. The circuit board is just one element of a product, and, sometimes a very minor part.

> the nonsense and disrespect for its users of the last two decades.

Exactly. For the reasons I listed above and more.

Once you get to the point where the thousands of dollars you send a software vendor every year are being used for crap that is utterly useless and irrelevant to you (and, I argue, the majority of users) it's time to move on. They don't get it. And I hope they pay for it with a massive loss of revenue. KiCad is actually at the point where most open minded professionals would have no problems at all. Sure, the GUI is kind of "retro" and it might not be as visually refined as other tools. Who the "*ck" cares? Seriously. It gets the job done. That's all that matters.

We are also considering to move from Altium to KiCad. I am glad to hear some positiv experience.

I almost can't think of a type of board you cannot do with KiCad. I would suggest you try it with a hobby project or two and go from there. Version 6 made important improvements to the file format and other areas. This is what we were waiting for. I wouldn't have touched it before 6.0.

Watch this and see what portions of it align with the kind of work you do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7-8nUU6e3E

Also, like I said in my prior comment, Python scripting turns KiCad into a very powerful tool. A loot of these videos are outdated (prior versions). The point is to illustrate the range of ideas that can be covered using Python.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kicad+python

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