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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

I learned PCB design on Eagle, switched to Kicad about 5 years ago, and in the last three years have really been doing a LOT of PCB design with Kicad. I love it so much!

Here's a dense four layer brushless motor control board I designed recently, which can be viewed online in the amazing Kicanvas viewer:

https://kicanvas.org/?github=https://github.com/Twisted-Fiel...

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This is me too. My first projects were in Eagle, primarily because it was the de facto standard for EDA for hobbyists for a while. KiCAD used to be awful and very challenging.

In the last several years, it’s really improved and I enjoy using it. If you haven’t picked it up in a while, give it a shot.

wow, kicanvas looks great for sharing designs, is the idea that you use github for versioning your kicad folder (probably better than my current lazy dropbox option) and then you can just share the designs with people?

that is a cool website.

can you share designs privately with team members? it looks great for collaborating if it's got authentication.

These are great questions! I wonder how it works if you have a file which is private on GitHub but you’re logged in to GitHub and you’re able to view the file in your browser. Maybe kicanvas is sufficiently local to your machine that this would work.

Either way I know it is under active development so you could file a GitHub issue and ask about that! Link to the GitHub for it on the main page here:

https://kicanvas.org/

Can users share the schematics also?

Perhaps I'm not looking in the right place, but I can't find the button for it.

Anyway, this looks great.

Seems like you need to change the URL to point at a schematic file:

https://kicanvas.org/?github=https://github.com/Twisted-Fiel...

You can also upload a local file which was what I did. It didn't have a shareable link though so I assume it was local.

Ah OK, I misunderstood.

Ditto (in that I learned Eagle and switched to KiCad a few years ago). KiCad is great! Way better than Eagle.

Nice to see you Taylor!

I'm really enjoying watching the progress on your motor controller!

Aww yay thank you! After three months in development the new boards are almost done with assembly and I should see them next week!

Love everyone.

<3 and it’s supposed to come with a silkscreen heart but I found a bug in their viewer for pours on the silk layer heh

https://github.com/theacodes/kicanvas/issues/31

What a nice piece of work!

Thank you!

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