KiCAD vs Eagle

[jpbar...@aol.com]

Hello all,

Each year I have interns at my business from the Bergen Academies (a Bronx Science type high school in NJ) and I wanted to settle on a free PCB software for their projects.  One intern of note was George Hotz who hacked the first iPhone and then the Sony Playstation.

I would typically suggest Eagle (free for boards up to 100x80mm), but their school is starting to use KiCAD (free with no limitations) which is now being maintained and further developed by a team at CERN.

I've been impressed with some of the KiCAD features I've seen in YouTube videos, ie routing that pushes other traces around.  It seems that it has seen major improvements in the last year or two.

I've been playing with Eagle layout for the last few months and I like it, but there are some big annoyances.  For example I can't add items to a group by clicking on them.  One has to use a selection rectangle and you may select a bunch of other things you don't want.  Also if one wants greater than 100x80mm for non-commercial use it's $820.  Their Wikipedia article shows a table of the various package prices.

I've been using PADS since 1992 and maybe I'm just so used to its ways.

Have any of you been using a recent KiCAD version and can you share your thoughts?

Thank you,

Joe Barbetta

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

[Max Henstell]

Tangential, but you can select arbitrary polygonal areas using the Eagle group tool, just click where you want the nodes to be and double-click when done (versus click-and-drag to define a square area).

KiCAD would be great if it were possible to use it without being a seasoned software engineer. Maybe things have changed since the last time I tried to use it.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NYCResistor:Microcontrollers" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to nycresistormicrocon...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nycresistormicrocontrollers.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[josh jordan]

I use Kicad professionally.  It is fast, concise, and without limitations.  I also use Altium.  I am not aware of any features Altium has that Kicad is missing.  I prefer Kicad because Altium is complex in a way that takes longer to do anything.  To make money most efficiently, it is important to use the cad package that lets you work the fastest.  I will accept Eagle work, but I would rate Eagle the worst electronic cad package that is currently being maintained.  Eagle is very limited and has a clunky, obtuse interface.  For instance, the tool bar has hot keys hard coded to the function keys.  I have to constantly reach up to the top row while also hitting the fn key because I have a mac keyboard.  A clunky interface like that must be open source so you can just change it and recompile the code, right?  Wrong, Eagle feels like clunky open source software but is actually closed source and costly.  Its been years, maybe they fixed they F-key remap stuff, because they do have developers who are supposedly working on things.

-Josh

[Chris Stratton]

You can define custom key shortcuts for Eagle.

That said, I'm not arguing for it. KiCad is quite tempting... the two
hesitations have been the habitual familiarity with Eagle's view
panning (so useful on a small laptop screen) and the tendency of
smaller organizations to standardize on Eagle. Ever since they went
to XML, the sense of lock-in has felt minimal - I've made behind the
scenes changes with sed on more than one occasion.

I remember at one point digging into the KiCad sources to see if I
could get it to pan like Eagle does...

[josh jordan]

Panning in kicad is just left clicking and dragging.  Supposedly middle mouse button is the right way to pan but I use a trackpad.  Two-finger zoom is nice I usually zoom out and zoom in to pan.  Glad to hear about xml and hotkey config in eagle.  I don't hate the tool, I just won't use it without charging extra.