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muskrat
Frequent Contributor
Username: muskrat
Post Number: 160
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, 01 February, 2010 - 05:31 pm: | 
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A friend pointed me to KiCAD as an alternative to my plodding along with a custom AutoCAD pcb system.
It seems to have a number of good features.
Has anyone got any experience with it? |
hackinblack
Frequent Contributor
Username: hackinblack
Post Number: 450
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, 01 February, 2010 - 11:57 pm: |
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i found the french site just after the program had been updated
'HOT open source PCB&schematic tool'
Posted on Thursday, 31 January, 2008
sorry i dont know how to link to a previous posting!(search for 'Kicad'on the chatzone)
it is a work in progress;which started after the author was dissatisfied with commercial PCB software;
so he developed his own
partly as a project,partly for his own use.
it is now in fairly active developement,so gradually improving
give it a whirl its all down to personal preference
i hate eagle!
although it can do anything it isnt easy to fly; ironic when it was the 'EASILY Applicable Graphic Layout Editor'...EAGLE...hmmm |
davejs
Member
Username: davejs
Post Number: 6
Registered: 09-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 02 February, 2010 - 01:45 pm: |
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Tinycad and Freepcb are a good combination with Veecad useful for stripboard layouts. |
alexr
Frequent Contributor
Username: alexr
Post Number: 106
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 02 February, 2010 - 04:02 pm: |
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I just tried KiCad and I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. I had tried it a couple of years ago and at the time was less than impressed with both its usability and stability but the present incarnation is very good.
The Tinycad/FreePCD duo was a good combination but Tinycad has been ruined by misguided development when they re-vamped the symbols database, which was flaky to begin with and is now super flaky. In fact mine just stopped working altogether. Meanwhile all development on FreePCB has ceased but unfortunately the last few versions to come out have been somewhat buggy.
So since I share hackinblack's aversion to eagle, it looks like KiCad is the way to go.
Alex
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atferrari
Frequent Contributor
Username: atferrari
Post Number: 826
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, 02 February, 2010 - 09:36 pm: |
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I am not sure which one was; maybe KiCad but one of those, year and something ago, was still unable to print. When after much trying I realized that it was like that, I gave up immediately.
Agustín Tomás - Buenos Aires - Argentina
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alexr
Frequent Contributor
Username: alexr
Post Number: 107
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 03 February, 2010 - 01:18 am: |
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I am not sure which one was; maybe KiCad but one of those, year and something ago, was still unable to print. When after much trying I realized that it was like that, I gave up immediately.
Probably it was FreePCB. It does not have a print function. However that is no problem as you can use a third party Gerber viewer to do the printing, I use the free version of Viewmate.
Doing it that way has the advantage of making you double check the Gerber files in someone else's Gerber reader.
Alex
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atferrari
Frequent Contributor
Username: atferrari
Post Number: 827
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 03 February, 2010 - 10:02 am: |
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Probably it was FreePCB. It does not have a print function. However that is no problem as you can use a third party Gerber viewer to do the printing, I use the free version of Viewmate.
Doing it that way has the advantage of making you double check the Gerber files in someone else's Gerber reader.
I checked that. It was FreePCB. I also found the Viewmate way, but later I decided to stop and passed the burden of that design to somebody else (commercial design).
Agustín Tomás - Buenos Aires - Argentina
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echase
Frequent Contributor
Username: echase
Post Number: 287
Registered: 07-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 03 February, 2010 - 12:21 pm: |
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I tried KiCAD but gave up in favour of EagleCAD. It looked OK but needed more persistence than I wanted to give it to understand it. |
davejs
Member
Username: davejs
Post Number: 7
Registered: 09-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, 03 February, 2010 - 09:27 pm: |
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alexr wrote "The Tinycad/FreePCD duo was a good combination but Tinycad has been ruined by misguided development when they re-vamped the symbols database, which was flaky to begin with and is now super flaky. In fact mine just stopped working altogether. Meanwhile all development on FreePCB has ceased but unfortunately the last few versions to come out have been somewhat buggy. "
Well, I guess I must just be lucky as I've not run into these problems. I use TinyCad 2.70 Build 248 and FreePCB 1.354 (1.355 is not a "stable version" and does have a nasty bug) running under XP Sp3.
I'm not quite sure what the "misguided development" is. I think Don Lucas and his co-developers are doing a grand job and version 2.70 is a great improvement over 2.60.
I have produced three reasonably complex PCBs (fabricated by Futurlec from Gerber files produced by FreePCB) over the past few months along with a number of stripboard layouts (where I can't, as a hobbyist, justify the PCB set up costs for just one or two boards) using the TinyCad / VeeCad combination.
I'm a very satisfied user of all three programs. |
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