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What's Coming In KiCAD Version 5

posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 12 2018, @09:02PM   
from the making-gratis-and-libre-tools-even-better dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

KiCAD is a GPL'd Electronics Design Automation (EDA) suite with schematic capture and printed circuit board layout abilities. Its capabilities continue to expand.

Hackaday reports

[...] five years ago, if you wanted to design a printed circuit board, your best option was [Cadsoft's Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (EAGLE)]. [These days], EAGLE is an Autodesk property, the licensing model has changed, [...] and the Open Source EDA suite KiCAD is getting better and better. New developers are contributing to the project and, by some measures, KiCAD is now the most popular tool to develop Open [Design] hardware.

At FOSDEM last week, Wayne Stambaugh, project lead of KiCAD laid out what features are due in the upcoming release of version 5 [Video]. KiCAD just keeps improving, and these new features are really killer features that will make everyone [who is] annoyed with EAGLE's new licensing very happy.

Although recent versions of KiCAD have made improvements to the way part and footprint libraries are handled, the big upcoming change is that footprint libraries will be installed locally. The Github plugin for library management--a good idea in theory--is no longer the default.

SPICE [Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis] is also coming to KiCAD. The best demo of the upcoming SPICE integration is this relatively old video demonstrating how KiCAD turns a schematic into graphs of voltage and current.

The biggest news, however, is the new ability to import EAGLE projects. Wayne demoed this live on stage, importing an EAGLE board and schematic of an Arduino Mega and turning it into a KiCAD board and schematic in a matter of seconds. It's not -quite- perfect yet, but it's close and very, very good.

There are, of course, other fancy features that make designing schematics and PCBs easier. Eeschema is getting a better configuration dialog, improved bus and wire dragging, and improved junction handling. Pcbnew is getting rounded rectangle and complex pad shape support, direct export to STEP files, and you'll soon be able to update the board from the schematic without updating the netlist file. Read that last feature again, slowly. It's the best news we've ever heard.

The author is tolerant of subtractive changes to proprietary licenses; other hardware hackers/tool users, in the comments there, not so much.

Previous: A Tool to Export EAGLE Projects for Use With FOSS ECADs
Cadsoft EAGLE is Now Subscription-Only
Scripts Make the (Proprietary) Cadsoft EAGLE-to-(FOSS) KiCAD Transition Easier
FOSS Printed Circuit Software KiCAD 4.0 Released
CERN is Getting Serious About Development of the KiCAD App for Designing Printed Circuits

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Original Submission

• Re:''I'm curious if autorouting will be a thing'' Re:''I'm curious if autorouting will be a thing'' (Score: 2) by EETech1 on Tuesday February 13 2018, @07:19AM (1 child)

  by EETech1 (957) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @07:19AM (#637032)

  I used the eagle autorouter for my quickcircuit prototype board layouts, and once you priced the features to get the results you wanted, it wasn't half bad. It was very useful to show you areas of the board that could use further optimization in the component placements!

  So, it was useful for pointing out that if you just moved these couple things a little bit, all these other things would go a whole lot smoother!

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• Re:''I'm curious if autorouting will be a thing'' (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @06:42AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @06:42AM (#641662)

  once you priced the features to get the results you wanted

  Today, Hackaday has put up a notice:

  Friday Hack Chat: Trusting The Autorouter [hackaday.com]

  Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging [hackaday.io]. This Hack Chat is going down Friday, February 23rd at noon, Pacific time. Want to know what time this is happening in your neck of the woods? Here, look at the neat time zone converter thingy [timeanddate.com].

  Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

  You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

  In the comments there, [hackaday.com] Beef says

  unless you are laying out something really complex[,] it often takes more time to set the stupid thing up than just do it yourself. otherwise you get crazy stuff like traces running off the pcb and 10 billion [vias]

  Pat says

  For more complicated stuff, I route most things by hand, because I have yet to come across an autorouter that understands the concept of "do your best"

  D00med says

  the autorouter [...] failed miserably. It wasn’t able to route a number of traces and used over 2x the number of vias vs noobish me manually routing traces

  elmesito says

  I have 20+ years professional experience as a “human-router” and I can only but agree with some of the comments.
  Over the years[,] I have tested the autoroute features of the main professional layout tools, and have noticed a distinct improvement; [that said], they still require a lot of time setting up, such as the paths were the traces are supposed to go, and the other rules, which effectively turn the autoroute feature in something that is very manual, and definitely not for the beginner

  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

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