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from the making-gratis-and-libre-tools-even-better dept.
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
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 12 2018, @10:07PM (5 children)
Not a great comparison. LibreOffice descends from StarOffice, which was commercial software; it wasn't a hobbyist project initially. Also, LO has far wider appeal than EDA software, since most desktop computer users want an office suite. Finally, KiCad has been around for many years now, it's not new by any stretch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @10:57PM (2 children)
I switched a friend to kicad and he switch a few people at a maker club, even if the target audiences differ the technique behind the gospel is the same
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:15AM (1 child)
I doubt it: different crowd. The "makers" tend to be much younger and more liberal, and not experienced engineers who generally are a bunch of Randian libertarians who think Free software is "communism" or similar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:21PM
It saddens me that pseudo libertarianism is as close as the older engineers can get to decency. Guess all the jokes about social ineptitude were right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @11:33PM
StarOffice [started as] commercial software
Yes, StarOffice started out as closed-source stuff.
It was written by a single individual, Marco Börries, for an 8-bit system.
He later ported it to other platforms.
It took him a year before his thing was incorporated, and I can't find any evidence which says, at that point, that he had any additional employees.
In the meantime, StarOffice and OpenOffice have passed through the hands of multiple owners.
LibreOffice, OTOH, has -always- been FOSS--as was its direct antecedent (OpenOffice) and has always had the same foundational ownership.
I'm guessing there isn't a single developer of LibreOffice who doesn't use the suite and that all of them want it to get even better.
Not a great comparison
Hmmm. KiCAD was initially a project of Jean-Pierre Charras, a French academic.
The suite has always been FOSS.
Its developers receive their income via entities other than the KiCAD project and, in many cases, those are entities who use the software (e.g. CERN).
Again, ISTM that the devs are also users and want the software to improve.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @11:53PM
I guess the LHC is a kind of hobby