eevBLAB #62 - PCB Wars - The Rise Of KiCAD
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- Опубліковано 26 кві 2019
- Dave gives two predictions for the future of the open source KiCAD PCB Design package
Will Dave's predictions come true? or do you think he's crazy?
Discuss below!
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#KiCAD #PCB #OpenSource
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I had another thought. This "commercialisation" could come about in a different way with good community intentions to fund future development. i.e. some form of "Association" or "Foundation" might form that might try to control and fund full time development and support staff.
My understanding of the open source licensing is that any software using any of the "free" original code must continue to be free and open source. Someone can mod it and sell _support services_ for it but they still have to have it free and share the code. So I don't see how anyone could "buy it up" and charge for it.
Blender, the open-source 3D modelling and visual effects uses this model, with the Blender Foundation created as a non-profit group dedicated to the full-time development of the software. They can sustain a full-time development team, as well as fund open-source projects designed to be used as educational and promotional material, through their development fund, which allows individuals and corporations to pay a monthly subscription fee to be "members" of the fund.
To me this is the best model, because once the software hits critical mass in industry, it basically supports itself through those who make real money off it, while remaining free for everyone else. The other option of a separate group forking the project into a commercial product isn't as good because the features added to the commercial software won't necessarily get fed back into the open-source project, and the paying customers will be getting their support through the commercial developer's walled garden, not through an open community where their experience may help others.
Definitely worth checking out how the Blender Foundation works if they're starting to think about how to tackle big, long-term goals.
Dave, in this era. I believe KiCad team can easily raise more than 100 thousands us dollars per year to hire one professional ee or software engineer to improve this software. As long as they keep the ead software open source. After all, there are no competent competitor in this open source domain. 😄The Matthew Effect, so KiCad become a giant. Finally KiCad will be acquired by Cadence, or Mentor or Altium and continue to be open source. This is the life of the KiCad.
@Peter Mortensen The important point is that you have to provide the source code including your changes. If you sell a modified version and do not publish the source code, you are in violation of the original license and loose the right to distribute the software. Every copy of the software you sell is then a copyright violation...
@@afm4711 He was not saying that. He was just saying it's ok to sell it. But of cause, as Dave said, you need to add value. And you do that by offering support. And as you have said, any changes must be made available to the community.
I'm an Eagle refugee - one of the users who had been paying for professional Eagle licenses dating back to 2010 or so, but was completely turned off by the recurring licensing model, having my designs held hostage in the cloud, and knowing that the software could be turned off/die with the flick of a switch, so I switched over to KiCad for all my work now. Autodesk got greedy, and is not at all trusted.
Autodesk has their million different DWG formats to keep folks on the hook. Converting to DXF can work for 2D bit less well for 3D.
Kicad.com domain was bought by digikey, because it was used for malicious stuff and they helped protect kicad name
No doubt
Damian Zaręba So they awarded blackmail by paying someone else's ransom...
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 it's free to take a domain off someone using it maliciously. No payments required.
And they are actually listed under the contributors in the CERN and Society Foundation (of which KiCad is a project): cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/page/partners-sponsors
I switched from Eagle to Kicad a few years ago and never looked back.
same here!
With the stupid autodesk signon in the current version I'm about to do the same thing.
Long time eagle user. I think i don't need to explain the disappointment of eagle now. Sad. I was sticking to the older version of eagle. I think now it's time to move on.
I've tried to swap over several times but every time I try I get super frustrated by some idiotic quirk in the GUI and then I switch right back again. You can really tell that it was designed by engineers/programmers without any real sense of usability. Maybe it has gotten better in the year since I tried it but I kinda doubt it.
@@treborrrrr first of all it was programmed by the people who themselves were in the need of a pcb-cad software and not by programmers who were just doing their job independent on what the software was...
There have been quirks with 3 different rendering engines in parallel, all with their own set of commands, but this has been unified now in KiCAD 5.
As a linux user, Kicad is pretty much the only game in town.
There are enough programs that work fine under wine.
i prefer kicad but eagle was fine for linux, before the cloud version :D (but you can still found the old version)
@@merlingallagher4484 Yep, many of the viruses and trojans run great under wine.
Move to Windows. Widen your world
@@andreamancausoft595 Eagle is still fully support on Linux. Its also not "cloud", it just has a superscription licensing model now. You can work offline and the free version doesn't even need an account.
I too switched from EAGLE to KiCAD (Feb. 2019) and I'm loving it! I'm an electronics engineer and teacher and many of my students (they used to work with EAGLE) now switched to KiCAD and they too love it! It works very intuitive. They like KiCAD a lot more than EAGLE.
I hope KiCAD will stay 100% free accessible so that students can and will keep on using it.
I've designed many projects with KiCAD and I love to work with it!
Don't worry, it's GPL software! GPL is a copyleft license, meaning anyone who takes KiCad, modifies it, and then wants to distribute it, must also release it as free and open source, otherwise they will be in violation of the license.
I see KiCad as the new Eagle - extensively used by hobbyist. The thing is, hobbyist market is very cost sensitive.
Yes, and that's why Eagle is hopeless. The "free" version of Eagle can't do *any* PCB over 160mm long.
@@EEVblog 160x100mm wasn't it? Eurocard size on standard/Freemium or half-Eurocard on free.
Regardless - it was the underhand behaviour of Autodesk, the "subscription only" scheme and the relentless shilling on Hack-a-Day which put a lot of people off (myself included).
Did my first KiCAD project the other week, and I've got the boards on my desk mostly-assembled. It's really come on in leaps and bounds!
Robert Feranec and the others like Eagle are moving towards subscribers, no one likes that.
KiCAD is the future for hobbyist the others for the pros.
The lead developer of kicad, said that their target market the professional market, if he had to throw one of those out of the market, which means new complicated features, he will make it complicated and throw the hobbyists
@@RiyadhElalami I would not worry about possible complexity. Adding new features may not automatically mean more complicated (even Altium can be used as a very simple software). PS: If someone helps to finance KiCad, it can become quite good Schematic Editor and PCB Layout software (that is realistic to achieve).
Hello from KiCon! Lots of new developers, FOSS folks, and big fab and assembly companies here. One thing I think KiCad has done is lower the barrier to entry for electronics designers, and it's created a whole new segment of users a result.
IMHO Dirt cheap PCBs from China is what has created the segment not the EDA software. It is now faster from a time point of view to draw up a quick PCB and get it made that fiddling with wires on a prototype board.
Zero-cost software for PCB design has existed for decades, and Eagle is super easy to get started with - KiCAD wasn't nearly as easy for the longest time. It was the more cumbersome but ultimately more powerful zero-cost alternative. Recently the quality of user experience and features of KiCAD have just been shooting up, while Eagle has stagnated.
KiCAD is giving you a better tool, and it gives you an ultimate confidence that your tool and your designs can't be taken away from you, it's capturing people who get interested in PCB design again after having done that in the past, and it's capturing people whom Autodesk is scaring away with their policies.
Some open source projects have got a strong boost since a few years. Blender 2.8, FreeCad 17, KiCAD and others. Of these, Blender 2.8 is definitely a real alternative to commercial solutions. More and more donations flow into these projects. In the long run, these free programs will be more attractive for businesses. With little donation money they receive usable free software. Initially as a supplement and sometime perhaps as a full replacement.
For businesses it's great. For corporations and enterprise, there's no vendor to yell at and CYA is broken. KiCAD could start charging support licenses for this, but they don't
I love it! So much thatI have contributed a kicad-symbol to the project. Probably I will continue do it. They have scripts that verifies that your part follows the design guidance. It saves them a lot of work when you make a pull request on github and before a librarian reviews it. The scripts run automaticly when you commit changes, and you can run them in python yourself.
I would pay for KiCad, I already donated but I would do pay for it, not subscription base, I would pay a fixed amount for every new version.
KiCad could do a similar thing to Blender for making money
I think that goes against the whole point of the kicad. I hope they don't shift to a paywall.
@@vejymonsta3006 They cannot, it is licensed under GPL V3, they currently offer support for paid money, but the software cannot be unfree.
As Dave told too, KiCAD is GNU GPL in its license, if I am right. So surely, a company can just use to sell it, BUT it needs to provide the source code on the modified parts so other companies, open source community etc can use it to provide that as an alternative ways as well, without paying. Strictly speaking selling a GNU/GPL product means you sell the "additional work" ie a medium it's distributed on, printed manuals, the work of maintenance etc etc, but still it needs to give back the source code of the modifications at least, which can be used to build the project itself alternative ways. Ie, even RedHat selling Linux provides the source, other Linux distributions sometimes use to build them for free of charge then, for example CentOS. So, I think this is actually not a bad thing which can happen! People would also benefits from it who don't want every pay for that company for their work. Surely in theory a company can try to "buy out" KiCad ie change license or make the authors to release it dual-licensed (so then can be used without the rules of the GPL) but that would require every contributor ever done even the smallest contributions to the KiCad project agree with that (I was also part of a GNU GPL project when it was re-licensed, about few hundreds of open source developers had to be found and made them agree on this to provide their contributions under an alternative license).
I love kicad.
Works great for my own etched PCB's as well for the PCB's I order from China.
If someone buys it, I bet there will be a fork called Libre-KiCad.
remember open office.....
I really dont think anyone needs to buy it. No one made money on a Linux Distro now services oh yes that is why Redhat owned it. Server intergration with Windows activedirectory / freeIPA and now OpenShift K8's Docker etc etc etc..
I thought that RH would have snapped up RackSpace before now to extend their offerings.
The danger relies in the "buy part list" feature. That is why digikey supports it. They could try to make KiCad in a way, that only for their shop a parts order list is created. The problem begins, when another seller wants to have this feature for his shop also in KiCad integrated. Digikey might try to hinder the other companies getting the code implemented in the official KiCad build when they pay the developers.
As a business I wouldn't want to use anything cloud- or subscription-based that requires always-on internet connections. Too much risk of internet outages or accounts getting locked for whatever reason.
I think most of the cloud based software nowadays works absolutely fine offline, either with a specific offline mode, or seamlessly. And Subscription based licensing really does not mean you need to be online all the time. It's more just how your license fee/service is invoiced, really.
@@mr_gerber Good points. I still prefer something that I can install locally, enter my (perpetual) licence key and be done with it. You newer know when a company loses interest in their cloud services.
@@samuelschwager
Not to forget if you want to archive some design.. with KiCad, you can archive the whole program right with the project and the files are human readable, which makes for simple porting interfaces, at least outward.
Subscription may work for someone using a tool daily, but for a small company or hobbyist where a tool may be used for a project on-off intermittently and then lay dormant years before next time, subscription models are just death. I have a smallcompany and will never ever pay a subscription! I need to be able to keep the (old) version alongside the projectdata for the future, I even transform the whole computers software installation to a vmware i age and store it, so I will be able to use the software again. It is NOT only a matter of money per month, or on-line versus off-line, it is so much more! Security is also a big issue, some work should NEVER be transferred on the net and even less stored in the cloud!
I did a project from scratch in KiCad recently (including building some footprints and schematic symbols) as surprised how straight forward it was. It's not the first time I've attempted a project but it has hit that tipping point.
Like all pieces of large complex software, there is a learning curve and certain things you just have to learn (managing footprints/symbols etc) but the counter to that is there is also very good tutorials on UA-cam, those alone got me past the initial hurdles.
I might have to give it another look. I tried KiCad once and it did not seem at all intuitive (or at least less so than eagle) - pretty much decided to stick with eagle at that point in time (2 or 3 years ago, now)
In the last 2 weeks I've started trying FreeCAD out, having learned SolidWorks at Uni. FreeCAD is no SolidWorks, but it's not that big of a leap. It may not be as feature rich, and lacks native assemblies, but I think it's at a place where I could use it for my next project.
@@andrewmackenzie2638 I was the same - I tried a very old version which had a bunch of separate applications (EESchema, CVPCB and PCBNew) which didn't really integrate, you had to create a netlist, import it, and it felt really clunky. The newer versions have a much better integrated design flow. It's still not quite the "realtime forward/back annotation" EAGLE has, but it's much better than it was.
@@andrewmackenzie2638 The assembly workbench in FreeCAD is not a stable workflow yet, correct. Note as of this writing the most usable assembly workbench seems to be A2Plus. This is a usability area which could surely use some help from contributors.
Using KiCad and JLCPCB I can get professional boards fabricated and delivered for under $10. This means I can try things I wouldn't before because of cost, so all sorts of new projects are possible.
And JLCPCB has recently made all the solder mask colors free so there's even more options to play with. Now it's your move PCBWAY.
I just downloaded/updated and it looks like KiCad V5.1.2 has fixed some nasty crash bugs that were in 5.0; yay!
Agreed, EasyEDA from JLCPCB is the best, I can find 99% of the parts in their library. Before that I tried Eagle, KiCad, Altium but EasyEDA is the best.
Regarding your prediction, not every market is the same. You're not crazy to think this is a possibility but I would argue it won't happen in the next 10 years. Sure we might see some "support" services appearing but I see it continuing as it is as an open-source non-commercial project.
Agreed, not every market is the same. That's why I didn't put a time frame on it.
*Donate via **_CERN?_* Do they only take donations of _highly accelerated hydrogen atoms_ or can I donate other particles?
You donate in electrons. Like most financial transactions these days.
@@RedwoodRhiadra Not many dad-joke level comments actually make me smile. Well done.
Just pay your taxes.
Back when I had more time (before I started schooling again) I had thought about starting up a KiCad support business. I still may go down that path in a year if no one else has!
Long live Kicad! Despite its frustrations, it will continue to improve, which is good news for everyone.
Besides RedHat, mention Ubuntu, and Canonical.
Also worth comparing KiCad to Blender. The latter has a big community, but assets, modules and extensions to buy too.
SUSE Too! 😃
Ubuntu / Canonical hah are no friend to the OpenSource / FOSS space, go ask GKH about Canonical ... If anyone its core kernel / phy and stack layer folks, anyone getting Linux running better ( and first time ) on the platforms out there.
Also thanks to GNU/ FSF for the tools that make it all possible!, Linux is a kernel not everything above it.
Thanks Dave !
I started using Altium CircuitMaker. Really nice program. Intuitive, and easy to use, and the autorouter saves a lot of time in the initial layout. But it's almost impossible to export and share your work, unless using their community forums, which means no uploading your OpenSource project to GitHub. KiCAD, like most OpenSource software, has a bit of a learning curve, but I'm liking it so far.
I just started a new job and they are using Eagle Professional. I told my boss that KiCad seems to have better and more comprehensive libraries and is free. The only benefit of using Eagle is that it comes with Fusion 360.
I just started getting into PCB design late last year, and KiCAD seemed like the natural choice for the hobbyist. The Digikey tutorial series on it really propelled me into making symbols and footprints from scratch, and now all my projects start at referencing component datasheets. Before I knew it, I had completed a handful of small projects, and now I have more on the way. It really is an easy tool to use, and I'm loving the improvements with the latest version (particularly a schematic capture GUI that doesn't lag anymore). I feel like I stumbled into PCB design at the right time, and I'm excited to see what's to come!
Still using it? How has it been?
Interesting. Thank you!
I started PCB design from scratch about 2 years ago. I had never touched a PCB design software before. Some reasons why I went with DipTrace :
1 - I could get my hands on for free. (as I could have with KIcad)
2 - They had (and I guess still have) video tutorials for quick and easy start.
3 - On one PCB manufacturing web site I visited, they mentionned that they would accept gerbers or different formats, including DipTarce, and that they had noticed that the PCB's they had to manufacture for custommers that were using DipTrace, were in average better designed than the PCB's of those using different software.
So I went into DipTrace, it was quick and easy and I ended up buying a license to fit my needs.
I may give Kicad a try one day though, it would be silly if there was a great software out there and not know about it ^^
Happy long-time (paying) Eagle user here. I'll keep using Eagle, because I'm comfortable with it and don't have the energy required to switch (like Dave and Altium!), but I'm happy to see Kicad growing and gaining a lot of mindshare. I can see some differing opinions here already regarding Autodesk :-) but I've been really happy with where they're taking Eagle. The volume of bugs they've squashed since taking over is enormous and they've also added a whole heap of useful features - many of which it should have had a decade ago.
My tip is that pcb service integration will rapidly increase like aisler.net already did. And I bet on digikey to highly invest since they are contributing for a long time. I wish it was element14
KiCAD is amazeballz and I love it!
I just recently used kiCad to develop a protype board for a project I'm working on. AWESOME software. So many good libraries
Software Subscriptions.
Er, no. Just no.
Totally. As a hobbyist who uses a PCB design tool maybe a handful of times a year, I am unwilling to pay any subscription fee.
I despise subscription software...and with the exception of $20-$25 periodical printed media subscriptions, I view all subscription services as scam marketing.
Gym memberships started that ball rolling. We all know that scam. I got a bike and never looked back. I'm certainly not interested in any other similar psycho-marketing auto-payment scams. If they can't sell me a product at a honest and straightforward price, I'm paying them to own me. If you don't own the tools for your business, you're an employee of the real owner.
-Jake
I went to a store today where you could rent a bed. Not like a hotel or something. A boxspring to rent for your own bedroom for a (non fixed) price per month... UHM WHAT
It's not a software subscription per se -- the software itself stays free. If you are concerned enough (think small businesses), you would pay a subscription for professional support, like what Red Hat is to CentOS. Although Red Hat has started selling closed-source software as part of their subscription which muddies the waters.
For the hobbyist it sucks. Professionally I want support so whether it's a subscription or annual maintenance you're paying for it one way or another. Time=money and phone call to the developer is usually the fastest solution.
Our Student Formula E team switched over from PADs to KiCAD this year with nothing but good experiences. And concidering some (me included) are using Linux or MacOS on our computers, it is a blessing not having to dual boot or have a VM for PADs. Besides simulation it has all the tools we need for developing our sometimes very complicated boards, and does so better than a lot of windows-only pricy alternatives
I was lucky in that I started making PCBs somewhat late, around 2016. Since the first PCB was 25x17cm it was bigger than the eagle limitations I had the option of buying the top of the line eagle, some other EDA sw or go with kicad. Since I hadn't used any sw before it wasn't a switch and I just started with kicad. Today I'm very happy I did since I now know the sw and it seems like it is growing all the time so the future is bright.
The numbers in that investor presentation are half-year numbers, not annual numbers. You have to double them.
Hi, Dave! Could you, please, compare KiCad and Altium - what tools we [mainly] loose, working with KiCad? Which of them you feel critical for professional works?
KiCAD is awesome!! Having it open source always will nurture more innovation globally, without any financial burden and other resource constraints to young innovators, students, hobbyists and early stage start-ups etc.,
With more plugins and other features updates + pyscript console makes it great tool.
Huge thanks to CERN 🎉
I recently started using EasyEDA i like that tool, and is has tons of user contributed components
Reinald Nijboer it’s actually really good that I used it to finish most board on hobby
I can say it is moving at lightening pace...
When I went looking for inexpensive Schematic/PCB software, I looked all over. One other package had a developer who was downright arrogant. Others seemed too closely bound to a part supplier. So KiCAD was by far the best option. It does have its quirks, of course, but generally I have found it extremely useful.
What my hope is as kicad grows it will spur growth in the other cad software companies to make the price difference worth it.
After about 10 years of working with EAGLE at first as hobbyist and in education, but later also in professional enviroments, I recently started using KiCAD at my new job and I actually like it very much. Nevertheless, in my opinion there are some characteristics in KiCad that still prevent it from being a REALLY good and industrially usable tool.
The first thing I really had to deal with was the too simplified library structure. I understand that hobbyists do not want to waste time with complex multi-symbol-devices with multiple package variants, symbol-package tables and device variant dependent part data, but for professional use and quality management, I think this is necessary.
EAGLE does not only know symbols and packages, but also so-called devices which define a valid combination of one or multiple symbols and link them individually to one or multiple physical packages. If you have atomic libraries (libraries with package and included ordering information) and and you net for example a new SMD resistor in 0805, you don't have to copy any symbol - you just have to fill out a new line in the attributes table. In a professional enviroment, you do not want to modify any value field in the schematic, because if your products need any kind of certification, the needed information should come from the library and it also starts speeding up the design process when you have to order the parts for your second PCB.
Furthermore, devices in EAGLE can constist of multiple atomic symbols (you draw a symbol once and use it as reference in multiple devices). For example, a quad-OPAMP can use the same basic OPAMP symbol as a dual-OPAMP and also both devices share the same the dual-supply-symbol with all other devics having a dual-supply-symbol. There are Quad-OPAMPs in DIL-package and some in SOIC-package, but in EAGLE it is possible, to have only one device in the library which can have both package variants. You can replace on by one of them in your schematic / design with only two mouse clicks. This makes consistant part and library management very very easy and even though the GUI in EAGLE is ugly a.f. this is one of the features I miss most in KiCad.
The second big thing I really miss in KiCad is the missing backward-annotation from pcbnew to eescheme. As there is no way to back-transfer data to eescheme, state of the art concepts as gate-swapping and pin-swapping are completely blocked out. Of course you can work arround this by manually modifing your schematic, but speeding up the design process should actually be the point of a EDA.
And the last big thing I am really missing is the implemetation of busses that cannot even be used to link different hierarchical sheets togethet without manually matching the names of the internal signals, which in my opinion is actually the point of using a bus. I think, this is on the list vor V6, but for now the bus feature is just useless.
But don't get wrong now - I think, KiCad is definitly on the right path and if they keep it up, some day it is going to be a really professional tool. But it is still a very very long way to go.
I believe Eagle is already pretty much dead in most hobbyist/open development already. I haven't seen a single project that used it for a new design in quite a while. Might be related to them not opening up their free-version to 4 layers.
4 layers and larger (>160mm) boards is crippling. Can't even do a single sided board with one LED if it's over 160mm, silly.
Keep it up, nice video, thanks for sharing it :)
It would be great if FreeCAD would improve a bit so that you can have free quality electrical and mechanical design combined. As it stands FreeCAD is very difficult to work with imo.
have you tried v18 which was recently released? this was a major refactoring. I recently had todo some 3D modeling for some transformer bobbins and I found freeCAD extremely easy. FreeCAD has a plugin to pull kicad boards in as well
It is true that the last time I tried FreeCAD, it was pretty awful, and Fusion 360 is much more straight forward. But the Fusion 360 principles, like cloud-only and Autodesk being the owner, I would be please to be able to use another software like FreeCAD if it has become usable now.
@@JonRoadleyBattin Ok, will try it soon then. I used v0.17 and see that v0.18 has just been released indeed. That plugin was basically the reason I tried FreeCAD but I couldn't get the hang of it back then.
I like freecad. It is a bit oldscool, so hard to use for first time. But i designed pcb layout with it, and it was great. :)
red hat is proffesional and high end.
honestly I see open source has the future, in the long run you can compete if you are using propetary code.
Agreed
Alfonce Jean However Red Hat in particular is annoying in the way they force their semi-proprietary changes onto other distributions, such as their GUI-focused "network manager", or their "wants to dictate rest of computer" megatools like libvirt, STONITH clustering, systemd, LSB.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 never said they were perfect.
I've tried KiCad - but I am back with Eagle. Eagle is pretty active.
Yeah ! Kicad is great, but painfull, the same project in Eagle (and others) take me only a fraction of the time expended in Kicad. Cheers !
@@brainfornothing Nice to see you two giving KiCad the same amount of time you gave EAGLE. /s, by the way.
@@brainfornothing You don't think that's because you already know Eagle? After all, "the best tool is the one you know", as they say.
@@mr_gerber I used Kicad before Eagle, lots a lots of hours, Eagle (and others) is far superior to Kicad in workflow. I test new Kicad versions frequently, but the interface and workflow still horrible. But, Hey ! If it works for you, Enjoy ! Cheers !
@@brainfornothing I don't use any of them, as I have access to Altium from work.
I've been using KiCad for quite some time now. I once tried Eagle before but nope. Not my kind of EDA for me lol
Buiz hey me too !
I like to think of open source projects that have commercial support like a public fountain... Most people walk by, and don't even care much about it. Some sit and admire it. Some hate it. But someone has to come and clean out the pipes. And make sure the pumps work. And adjust things etc.
Open source is only open, so long as people want to contribute back--either in code, or in cash.
I switched from Eagle to KiCAD, then from KiCAD to EasyEDA - it's not technically as "powerful", but it does absolutely everything i need, is much easier to use, has a much better part library, makes it super easy and nice to share open source designs, and the tight integration with LCSC and JLCPCB is very cool.
I started with Calay on a PDP11 in 1976. Then came "ForPCB" on DEC10, ORCAD DOS, Masstek/Aldec PCB/Schematics, Protel variants, ORCAD Capture/Layout + Gerbtool + Viewmate (Gerber viewers), Eagle, Altium, Pulsonix and Mentor Expedition suite. I am still sticking to the last because of customer's demands.
What reason could there be to investigate KiCAD? Are there any special tools/advantages?
I just tried KiCAD few months ago. Although it does its business but I dont know I just didnt feel comfortable using that and never felt its gonna be my tool ever. May be in future if it improves a lot I would definitely go for it. I have a dream though to develop a PCB design tools someday if time permits. Whatever EDA I have used so far I just didnt find a very comprehensive one which not only assist in hardware designs but it can assist in software development perspective too. Best thing about Eagle is, its very lightweight and its XML scripting. I would still be using Eagle for next couple of years.
i finished 2 layer PCB with kicad, which is in production now
Another way that I can see a company commercializing it is to maintain a free "in-house" tool chain.
A PCB fab or a company like Digikey might be interested in pouring some money into it so they can provide a high quality value add that also helps drive their own primary business.
Nice Blog. I have been using KiCAD since v3 and it has only gotten better. CERN chucking funding was a major gamechanger and that could be seen in the refactoring in v4. Pulling the community libraries into github for peer review was also the most sensible thing done and this provides a key difference from other eCAD tools. v6 should be amazing if they can pull off their wishlist (constraints overhaul, bus declaration...) . While I do think at some point kicad will be commoditised ( paid support, library creation etc) and it might be by digikey HOWEVER, digikey owning kicad.com at the moment was more to free the domain from a hijacker
Seems like making decent libraries is an important aspect where money could be made.
Snapeda you can order any IC
I loved Circuit Maker back in it hay day. Did it ever get updated after 1999? CM2000Pro was really good before Altium destroyed it.
@5:47 That could be a famous last word moment. The used to say the same thing about blender. Now blender is getting ready to replace everything out there thanks to the substantial donations it's received over the year from large gaming and movie companies. I guess they got tired of paying the Autodesk tax for software that runs like sh*t.
I've noticed, at least in the U.S., many companies used to put Cadence Allegro or OrCAD on their job postings. Altium has been seemingly growing in popularity among tech companies.
Altium Nexus is phenomenal, but my company doesn't want to pay for that. Altium Designer is still very good, but you have to fight to get it to play nicely if you share libraries with other users.
If you're a single user, Altium is incredible. They've improved. Making footprints and associated 3D models is very fast and extremely reliable. I used to have to make them in SolidWorks for passives and ICs. Schematic symbols have become easier and you can perform supplier searches to link parameters and live links. This saves me so much time, as I used to have to add each parameter manually.
Oh, and it has subversion built in. It works very well and you can visually compare any committed versions. You can browse any changes, such as modified locations of parts or net names. You can pinpoint where a mistake was made.
Cadence and Altium are totally different market segment. Cadence with Mentor Graphics make high-end software and Altium more middle/high-middle market segment.
Altium is great software for what most companies need (and in my opininon is best ratio of fincionality to price), but it is still not in class as Cadence or Mentor Graphics. Companies who need high end software will not soon switch to Altium.
Here in Europe Altium is most popular PCB software (but now some German software is starting to take some share of market from it, but still not in significient numbers), if you count number of companies that use it .
Simple Altium is not in competition to Cadence , same as in CAD software you have CATIA (high-end) and SolidWorks (middle/high-middle) are not competition (I pick that two software just as example becouse both are owned by same company).
I could see this, plus I think the money will be in creating pre made component libraries with verified 3d etc. Even altium is doing that with the vault components and stuff (which I tend to copy out and put into my own libraries).
I'm in the process of switching. The pricing model of Eagle is suicide, I guess they know this now, but eagle was good. Actually I would go so far as to say fantastic.
And while switching there are some items that I find missing in KiCad:
* Being able to write commands like "move r2", plus as in a terminal being able to navigate back and forth in commands
* When I have done something with a click of a mouse, like place a resistor, I just click again to place again, in KiCad a popup appears, a bit annoying
* ulp scripts.. gotta love that.
But hey! I'm not complaining, I'm a software engineer, I can just contribute.. Gotta love opensource :-)
Thanks KiCad team, great job guys!
I haven't tried to use KiCad in a year or two. Last time that I tried it, the interface was very non-intuitive, the parts database was a mess, and it just didn't feel finished. I might check it out again and see what has changed. Altium is great, but it's way more than I need for my homemade PCBs, and my version is getting pretty old as well. A good free solution would be nice, but I haven't found one that I like.
Nothing changed, sorry, I have the same problem, I like Kicad, but... Cheers !
Tutorials are a must (note these are for older versions; v5.0 shouldn't be that different in terms of UI):
- ua-cam.com/video/JN_Y93RTdSo/v-deo.html
- learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/beginners-guide-to-kicad/all
I find KiCad's parts database much more faster and intuitive to use than Altium's (Vault) nowadays.
It's very different to Protel/Altium in places (unfortunately keyboard shortcuts too), but once you understand the workflow I guarantee you'll switch too.
If you have any problems, browse here and within a couple of hours someone will help you (being friendly helps a lot ;-)
forum.kicad.info/
It's definitely quirky and tyrannically stubborn in being so, but those willing to bend tend to find it quite usable. Those who waltz in and expect VIP service deluxe will absolutely be, and continue to be disappointed.
Since CERN got into KiCAD development it's over for everything else because schools and universities will now prefer it over commercial products.
Cool to see that people at places like CERN are adding stuff to the code. I think Dave is right, Eagle went downhill when it became subscription model.
I am a happy user of DipTrace, so much so I upgraded to the pay for version.
I too looked at KICAD then purchased the fill Diptrace package. Happy.
Us too. Diptrace since 2011. Smooth as silk.
Group of developers produced a program called SageTV about 2 decades ago. Very strong following of home theater enthusiasts and contributors. I click into the website one day to find their store was "boarded" up. The forums were still online however. Turns out the devs took a buyout & employment deal with Google. My guess is SageTV was the best software on the market. The user base was left in limbo for over a year wondering what would happen to the server-side components; mainly the tv guide & plugin hosts. Thankfully, the devs were "allowed" to open-source most of the platform and it appears what's left of the community is trudging forward with dev work. A lot of talent jumped ship for other options during the info blackout though.
I used it for the first time a few day ago. I was using an old (5?) version of Eagle on Windows. Now i switched to Linux, so i installed Kicad. Surprised me a lot. Very good software. Learning to use Eagle took quite some time back in the day, but Kicad is like i was thru the tutorial very easily. A lot faster to work with, also. Eagle won't be missed by me, that's for sure.
I don't think anyone can "run with kicad to make it commercial", isn't the license open source? And even if someone decided to make a commercial version, the open source community could fork the project at the last free version and continue from there. Also, the fact that CERN backs the project would make that move unlikely, i think.
It seems like the standard commercialization path involves both new features and bug fixes being gated off from the open version by both time and how useful they are. When the company controls both the premium version, and what is accepted into the community version, the community version seems to always suffer.
Selling support or limiting the free license to no commercial/low value commercial use seems to work better in keeping a community together and avoiding a bunch if branches constantly splitting off.
👍👍👍
Sound like a good gess 😄👍
I've been using WinQcad since 2005. It works great for me. I'm probably the only user. Any thoughts on this software?
Kicad has improved. I think "eevBLAB #62 - PCB Wars - The Rise Of KiCAD" will help Dav'e predictions come true.
There is now also LibrePCB, although still considered beta. I would like to see it reviewed by someone with experience of multiple design packages.
In the long run, I do not think commercial pcb design software will be safe because they can offer electromagnetic simulation while free alternatives are not. It looks like the software parts are out there do the same thing in KiCAD or other open source software. I could see the possibility of something like MEEP or similar electromagnetic simulation package getting integrated into an open source pcb design software to allow hobbyist/amateur EE to do designs generally done at the professional level. It is just a matter of someone having the interest and the time to do it.
ALL HAIL KICAD!
I've been kinda used to altium (relatively old version of) . Just dont ask how I obtained the copy and license. havent even touched KiCad.
I've switched from Eagle to kicad as a hobbyist as 4 layer boards are now so cheap. It's much easier to learn eagle off the bat, but I found creating footprints and symbols much simpler on Kicad.Wil be interesting to see if Kicad goes the way of RedHat, then we'll get the equivalent CentOS maybe.
My view on KiCAD.... The battle between free/open and paid software for PCBs is much like the battle between Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape. Although I use Inkscape whenever I need to edit an SVG file, Illustrator is still the go-to app for professionals. And the same with many other professionals. And I also tinker with KiCAD, but at the end of the day I still do 100-percent of my PCB designs with Eagle PCB. For folks like myself who have been using Eagle for years, I have far too many custom libraries and layouts in Eagle. Not sure if they all can be coverted to KiCAD, but even if they could, why should I move to something else? There's really no "killer feature" in KiCAD for my needs. I'll continue to use Eagle, and I think many other professionals will do the same with their choice of EDA - whether it is Eagle, Altium, or whatever else. IMO, free/open has its place, but in no way is it going to turn the professional EDA field on its head.
Same here
Give it to students and they will be able to use it for anything for free.
Human readable files.
No cloud.
That will turn fields on its head. ;-)
And yes, the uni I work at gets licenses from Autodesk and Altium for this kind of stuff.. so students get hooked early. Yay? :-(
A billion dollar market isn't that big nowadays, but you are probably right about some medium to large company trying to hone in on the KiCAD support market, either as a separate revenue stream or more likely as support for a related business (e.g. digikey).
Do it Dave. It's asking for your stamp. You know what's needed for making it better and you know the clients. Do you still have any agreements with the old firm? I'd whack over $10 a month to support people to do this.
I'm a Protel orphan. Used it since it came in those little red boxes, lost track of it after 99SE. It got harder to keep my earlier versions going on newer op-sys's and I couldn't justify the cost of the latest versions with it not being my main job anymore (more of a hobby).
Autodesk is going to buy it
It's not super feature packed, but easyeda by the jlc lcsc crew is pretty nice! It is online, free, cross platform, and is still actively developed. Used it because I had a school group project. Interested to hear your views on it...
That's the kicker - it's online. Not local
Open source doesn't mean you have to contribute all changes you make. It usually means you have to make the source code you use available (on demand). Like many routers use openwrt. They make their own changes and hide the source code somwhere within the websites or only send it to you when you request it.
Most of the open source licences require you to share any changes you make. Where people are getting away without sharing changes they are usually either breaking the rules or making a new product in a way that doesn't change the original code.
www.kicad-pcb.org/about/licenses/
"The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms."
I'm currently an Eagle user and I'm thinking about switching. The one thing I have noticed is that there were a lot of updates recently. Like the integration with fusion 360, redesigned interface etc. I wonder if that is because KiCAD is becoming a threat. Either way, it's better for us the consumers.
I love the fusion integration too much to switch.
@@LittleRainGames KC should integrate with FreeCAD, then you'd be set
@@LittleRainGames Yea fusion is just awesome. Keeping Eagle afloat for me.
@@andrewmackenzie2638
KiCAD is interfacing with FreeCAD already.
If I remember correctly the scripted 3d shapes come from FreeCAD.
And KiCAD is able to export STEP format to load your PCB in FreeCAD.
@@joansparky4439 Yeah, I actually looked into it after I made the comment, just to see if anyone had done anything - I was pleasantly surprised!
If there is any commercialization of KiCad, I highly suspect it will be more along the lines of support contracts, and possibly ancillary services like additional component libraries, models, extensions and things along those line. They might also provide things like migration and conversion services, for example, selling the service of converting other file formats into KiCad ones, or doing things like creating templates based on evaluation boards and that sort of thing.
I seriously doubt they'd ever charge for the software itself, especially for individual users. Since it's GPL licenced, doing anything along those lines would surely lead to a community-driven fork that continued to be free of charge. While KiCad is a great tool, it isn't particularly special; the main reason for its popularity is the fact that it's free - a fork like that would take a lot of users with it, defeating the entire reason why people would choose to use it.
I have used OrCad, then PADS(with all bells and whistles 3500euros) and lately have been shifting to KiCad. KiCad is ideal for a small company where PCB design is not main business. PADS is overly priced and complicated. I just like to get things done fast and KiCad provides amazing features. You even get autorouter and interactive router. I do not understand how Altium and PADS can still be charging premium whereas free tool can do everything you need for basic PCB design.
Why I use paid tools? The answer is: future. If I believe that my company is going to grow, then I would like to use software which can grow with my company. However, I am not sure why others go for paid tools.
Altium can do a hell of a lot more than KiCAD. I would not like to be a professional PCB designer again and be using KiCAD. If you are doing "pasic PCB design" then you wouldn't be paying for Altium.
@@EEVblog I like how you quote Julius, but get it wrong.
Well, PCB design is PCB design. You makes your schematics and transfer to PCB. If you already have all DRC, autorouter and interactive router in KiCad I don´t know what more would you need for a basic design. By basic design I mean for example an industrial PCB 100x160mm with a micro, IO components like optos, transistor, about 100resistors and capacitors. I have previously designed well over 100 various PCB´s of various nature from 1 to 6 layers with OrCad and PADS. I find KiCad pleasing to work with for its simplicity. It does not have unnecessary crap that comes with PADS for example. One great plus is that you are free of dongles/network nodes.
@@juliuswilkko The magic word here is "basic". If you only do basic designs then you don't need any high-end tools, KiCad can work ok.
But if you are working on more demanding designs with many thousands of components and humongous BGAs then professional tools like Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro is worth the money. They have so many more features like complex constraint formulas, reuse blocks, high speed design, etc. and also - wait for it - a proper library manager!
In comparison with those tools, KiCad is just a toy, but a usable one.
What benefits does Altium bring over kicad, to justify its high cost?
I would like to know that too.
@@thekaiser4333 it has an insane amount of features for high speed design and manufacturing.
You can do 3D flex PCBs etc.
Something like the RedHat model works well for software used by software developers. They sell a base for your own system that is then sold to an end consumer with a different business model.
KiCad doesn't 'sell' a base for your own EDA tool, they 'sell' to the end user and the end users support needs are only partially to the use of their tool. I doubt that a lot of people call up Adobe to ask them stuff about how to use Photoshop, that something that the community around the tools solves far better. So its hard to ask for money there.
Access to a developer forum is really not that enticing unless you develop on KiCad yourself and in that case, why would the company making money with developing KiCad should charge someone willing to make their 'own' product better, doesn't make much sense.
Unless you can convince the big PCB design firms to switch from Altium to KiCad there is not a lot of money involved. After all its the professionals who pay the big money, not the hobbyists and Open Source enthusiasts, they want a free tool.
Have a look at Codeweavers, they commercialise Wine and until Steam came a long there was very little money to be made there and I would argue they have a much better market to stand in than KiCAD does.
So tldr; I highly doubt anyone will able to commercialize KiCAD with success.
I'm not so sure on that. If what you're paying for an Adobe subscription for a video editor instead got you access to talk to the developers and actually get your bugs fixed, and the tool is equally good, I think there would be a huge number of takers.
Also Eagle has full time developers and hasn't been nixed. Clearly there's money there.
@@Anonymouspock Of course Eagle is still there, because you have to pay for the tool in order to use it commercially or do anything beyond 2 layer designs. Its a "you have to pay model" rather than a "you may pay for better support". Also its mostly still there because Autodesk is investing in it, before the acquisition Eagle was quite troubled financially
.
I don't think a 10€ subscription will give you any meaningful priority over normal bug reports, fixing bugs in general is always in the interest of the developers, no matter what the user pays.
Again any meaningful amount would come from companies and if you can't attract those the whole elevated support scheme is kind of broken.
My only problem as a lazy person is that I just got used to the weirdness of Eagle and am so reluctant to get used to the weirdness of another program.
Don't hesitate - throw away Eagle! ;-)
@@uwezimmermann5427 I think I'll give it a shot in a project :-) Schönes Wochenende!
@@Keex11
If you run into trouble.. schau einfach auf forum.kicad.info/ vorbei.
Wir helfen auch Leuten die nicht fliessend Englisch schreiben. ;-)
The reason open/free is bound to turn into a commercial product is because, at the end of the day, companies want a sense of accountability for the software they use. Which is why, for example, Red Hat is so successful. Although Linux is free/open, companies were hesitant to jump onto Linux unless there was accountability for the software in terms of professional support for the product, which is what Red Hat provides. I work in the federal government, and I'm not going to recommend a product that I can't rely on if the software fails somehow, and I have to rely on forums filled with volunteers and zealots. I want to consult with a professional company that isn't going to tear me a new asshole just because I asked a stupid question. My company is paying for professional services, and I god damn can ask the stupidest of question I want without getting chewed out.
Hence the commercial support business model. Which has worked for Redhat, Canonical, Blender and say Android ....
So you want an engineer drawing a paycheck from you who you hope is able to deal with your problem?
What happens when that engineer can do squat about the problem?
Annyhow.. this will come for KiCAD, sooner or later.
CERN already takes in donations to be able to develop stuff for KiCAD.
And Digikey is sponsoring quite a bit and made a library (besides the official KiCAD one) which is linked with it's 'warehouse', so ordering the parts with Digikey after using their library is as smooth as silk.
And zealots and nerds on forums are humans, who do this in their free time.
If they get served a dumb question or being treated unfriendly, they will tell you that.
You either need help and be friendly or you want someone to scream at.
The latter will only be provided for money.
No sane person is going to support your need for 'professional services' if you behave unprofessional.
@@joansparky4439 Read up on the word "accountability." If an engineer seriously can't come up with a fix, you suspend the service.
@@yuppiehi
I don't see how open source can't be the basis of your business model. If you need someone to be responsible for fixing a problem you have, it can be an open source developer with the only caveat being, that the 'fix' he implements for you will be available to ALL other users of that software.
So what you really want is actually a developer who works for you.
This can either be inhouse or a 3rd party.
That's what open source support is and how it works.
So if you think you can use open source software and have some spare change it might be time to inject some into KiCAD to get it closer to a project where there is money in there for developers to code for the project..?!
Many companies develop for free but charge for training and support, which I think it's a good compromise
Dave you could join and spew on for either. Everyone needs a specialism.
I think it's a bit easy to overestimate the hobby market.
What's good here is if a company champions the project there could be a nice commercial product and a good hobby offering. As long as they don't get too horny for the hobby market and cloudify it or muck it up otherwise.
What would make KiCad even better is a way to easily contribute symbols right from within the software. I have a few that I think are of high quality, but I didn't know where to contribute them and I didn't bother to search for it for long. If there was a button "upload this footprint" and a community of editors and enthusiasts that help error-check them (maybe also a "report an error on this footprint" button directly in the software), that would help sooooo much.
Too much work for the librarians. What you consider 'high quality' might not fit their guidelines.
If you want to share your symbols/footprints/3d shapes.. go to github and read the guide on how it's done.
Sending of something you think is OK and let somebody else do the hard work of fitting it into the rules is not useful.
Most of the generic symbols/footprints/3d shapes in the official library are thus created via scripts.
@@joansparky4439 No I'm not saying someone else should correct my mistakes. But a community driven approach that makes it easy to contribute and adds motivation by giving ranks/badges etc. could really work out. Wikipedia is probably the best example
@@TheSlowGrowth
Well, that exists.. I even made the ranks from a simple user to be the moderator of the help forums ;-)
And again, most of the work of adding a symbol/footprint/3d shape to the official lib is making it KLC compliant. Boring, repetitive work that no one likes, even the volunteers who maintain the official library. That's why most of it's content is script generated nowadays, way less maintenance work.
So you have 3 choices.. share on your own platform (github for example, I share most of my 3d shapes there) or do the leg work and make your footprint KLC compliant and get it into the official lib or do not share.
Really no other way that doesn't leave someone else with more work that its worth.
Or do you like to spend your free time sorting out stuff from other people?
Has anyone tried to move components in KiCad after making connections in schematics, does connections follow? When I did the connections were left orphan.
Dave ,You really should check out how much Eagle is evolved. For $15/mo I feel like it's no different than supporting anyone else via donations. Also, Eagle is still free under the original terms.
There still is a free option.
That is the case with Blender as well. It's starting to attract devs and sponsors like never before.
Good for KiCad! But I'm betting Autodesk is going to revamp Eagle and roll it into Fusion 360 soon enough.
Into Fusion360? Where did you get this from? Wouldn't make any sense
You can already reference eagle projects into fusion. Since fusion has multiple workspaces for different tasks integrating it would make perfect sense.
@@juweinert From one of the product guys. It's been the plan the whole time
.
@@ChristophPech I know. And this integration makes sense. Put the 3D-Version of your PCB into a Fusion project is absolutely fine and cool. But why should I open a CAD/CAM program when I want to do circuit layout? That's total BS.
@@GeorgeGraves Wow. That sounds plain out stupid. Obviously you know them personally. Did you tell them how stupid that idea is?
So if they would be Autodesks products, AD would happily amalgamate Photoshop, After Effects and Pro Tools just because musicians also need Album artwork and music videos?
You don't even need a full commercial entity, you only need a foundation people can sign onto. The very first thing to work on, that the Open Source side doesn't effectively do (in any project): Perfectly consistent UI/UX, driven with feedback from people who use these type of tools all day long, like... Dave.