Free software is too dear (importing from cadence allegro)

Software
12

Absolutely disagree. We are using Kicad for professional work since 2005.

Absolutely agree here :slight_smile:

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13

+1
and KiCad is in use at some Universities and it is growing :wink:

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14

I didn’t mean that KiCAD can’t be used there… but I don’t think the developers are out to go head-to-head with the dearer commercial tools (yet).
The OP seems to expect stuff from KiCAD that the developers just don’t have on their agenda (yet).
His expectations and pet-peeves are not catered for and probably wont be until someone needs that feature badly enough and sits down and implements it. The mindset of the OP will hinder him to be part of this process, so he and alike’s (at least at the moment) are not sought after targets for KiCAD.

PS: If he was in the target group he wouldn’t have started his OP as he did.

Is there any official flyer?
I feel like dropping some off at our IoT lab… they seem to focus on Altium.

15

Highlighting the key word.

Allegro , Autocad DXF etc might be commonly used, but they are not standards as their formats are not fully published. Licenced access to the protocol is usually not possible for Opensource source software.
Importing projects from another package is a minefield, for commercial software too. Basically commercial vendors have nothing to gain by simplifying export. Import is a marketing tick box and the capability is often exaggerated. Even moving to newer versions of the same software can cause unexpected problems

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16

A non-academic Altium seat is around 9k USD, 50% more than a technician earns in a year in Malaysia.
ECAD software is very expensive for Asian users. I have moved my staff to KiCad because it gets the job done and everyone can have a seat

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17

I don’t think so, but if you search from some users/developers and kicad mailing list you will get:

And I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg of a growing audience.

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18

We (regulars) always fall into the trap. I know I’m wasting my time writing this post.

I use kicad because it works. It is an excellent tool. I don’t need to compare kicad with other tools. In fact, some years ago I quit testing other ECAD programs.

We do not need to make a defense of kicad. It is out there for anyone who wants to use it, no one is forced to use it. Some people think commercial is equal to bug-free. Let them keep on thinking so. Some people demand opensource software what they don’t dare beg commercial software. Let them keep on demanding.

Most of us are here to help and being helped. But I’m not here to persuade anyone to use kicad. I’m not at all a kind of priest.

Could kicad be better? Sure. Has kicad some quirks? Sure. Sometimes it needs a workaround? Sure. But it lets me do anything I have needed so far to make a good pcb.

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19

^^ this :smiley:

“You get what you pay for” is the adage, but I think it is fair to say with KiCad, you get a lot more than you pay for. According to OpenHub.net, you are getting around $12 million worth of software.

That site also illustrates just how relatively small the KiCad project is, which people perhaps don’t realize. Compare it to Mozilla Firefox, which they suggest is worth $287 million. Bill Gates said Windows Vista cost $6 billion to create.

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20

Let me also jump into the discussion just as another (commercial) example.
I am currently at a research institute that uses Altium Designer. We work on (civil) radar systems in the 120GHz or even 240 GHz or above frequency range using our own custom designed ASICs.
While I have to say that Altium is very powerful, it certainly has it’s limited. Concerning digital design stuff, I would say it is a very good professional package, giving you an internal signal integrity checks and advanced stuff like this.

However Altium fails horribly, when it comes to importing and using distributed HF structures. Imports are buggy, imprecise (very coarse approximation of DXF splines) and tedious, even with the methods that are explained on the Altium website. One thing that drove me crazy was the layout of a substrate integrated waveguide (see https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/substrate-integrated-waveguide), which is basically two rows of Vias between two closed copper layers, that have a constant distance to each other (no matter what the line-shape of your waveguide is). There is virtually no practical way, except than handplacing, to generate these kind of structures.

Next year I am planning to startup a company with a friend of mine, in the same topical field and I am currently looking around for software that we can use.

  1. It has to be cheap (or free), since this is a startup afterall
  2. It has to work natively on Linux (which Altium does not btw), because Linux is also free
  3. If it is open source, this might actually be a huge advantage, so we are actually able to add features that we want and need for our purposes (SIW generator from above…)
  4. We are not afraid of programming and plan on giving back to the community
  5. We can tolerate on using nightly builds in our first company years. We see the KiCAD development as “strongly uptrending” for the future.
  6. Considering that with CERN, there is our income tax money at work (We are from Germany), we want our company to profit from this tax money. Also I donated some money to them :slight_smile: Yay Research!

And that is why I started looking around here (not too long ago). And why I have started to develop the Via Fence generator python plugin for KiCAD (as a proof of concept), which as of the time writing this is already functional on a basic level. (See https://github.com/skuep/kicad-plugins). This is something that would be completely impossible (maybe with a lot of pain…) with the Altium software.

Btw: We also had EAGLE on our radar, since it is pretty good for the stuff we want to do, it even runs on Linux and has a nice scripting interface. I have been using EAGLE in private for 10 years+. However, with the current license changes, this is not a debatable option for us to start a company with. Under no circumstances.

Just my 2 cents. Thanks for everyone helping in the development of KiCAD. Some years ago I thought not differently from bear2012. I guess that is just what the world looks like to everyone, with commercial software everywhere. Once I got my head around the whole Open Source thing, i just like it. But: As everyone else said here already: (Just like us) you must not be afraid of getting your own hands dirty when you actually want to have a specific feature. This is the “cost” of Open Source software. Full Stop!

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21

[quote=“skuep, post:20, topic:7092”]
4. We are not afraid of programming and plan on giving back to the community
[/quote]Pretty much all someone can ask for. I do my part by NOT coding. Believe me, this is a GoodThing™. :wink:

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22

Coding is not the only way to give back.
Helping out with the documentation effort, the library or even here on this forum are ways to give back.

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23

I didn’t know KiCAD had a marketing team. And since I picked it up over two years ago I have used it to produce products for a (very!) small manufacturer serving a niche industry.

Dale

24

So much this. Hard to overstate how helpful it is to just have people who know how to use it around to help out people who don’t.

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25

For me the 3D scripts and library maintaining started out at my work, where I was doing more and more work with the mechanical guys. The step export was a really awesome for this, but the libraries didn’t have any support for the step export. Some cookies for Oliver and 1500 models later and here we are :slight_smile: step export is so much easier and I really think the community got together for this!

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26

Love that part. :thumbsup:

I was just exasperating for effect and to stay within the OPs tongue in check :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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27

After all, it is just drawing lines and shapes like when first learning to draw?

For me, depending upon my schedule, I don’t like to see newcomers not get a reply within a day. I may not even understand their question without at least trying to help; even if it ends up failing.

Most of the time it ends up sideways after that; but I’m okay with it.

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28

Sure, importing is a minefield. As programming in general. Yet most of packages do import projects created in either other POPULAR packages or in some kind of standard exchange formats. As KiCAD offers exclusively import in DFX and Allegro, and neither of two work properly, as it appeared with a simplest board - to protect lack of accuracy in programming and testing with words “nobody do it” is pointless. Yes, they do. Yes, there are standards to interchange data. Yes, it MUST be with any serious, not toy-like looking products. Yes, it’s not a “1% of demand” when people are switching from one tool to another or trying to use multiple ones to get best of each of them.
Addressing briefly others points: nobody says that “commercial means bugs free”. But “commercial” usually means that people are responsible for what they sold. And quite often legally responsible, their responsibility is enforced by law. With free product – yes, you exactly get what you paid. Plus a lot of fun, of course.
The attitude to use exclusively free stuff for “startup” (just because it is a “startup”) – I think it’s funny. And when it won’t be a startup anymore, what’s then? Switching from free shiny beauty into an ugly, expensive yet at least workable commercial stuff? ))
About learning curves in general: I didn’t come with any negatives to KiCAD. Yeah, I read different negative comments on it from so-called “professional community”. Yet I was quite opened to this and the only thing I wanted: to see its autoruter. Sure, I know it is “not important” and not even necessary thing at all, same as import/export feature.) No more than 1% if people using that and nobody should care about it. But I just wanted to give a try. Even with any “learning curve”. Yet KiCAD didn’t’ give me any chance with it: very sophisticated package, claiming having strengths here and there – cannot parse the simplest text file properly, at the very beginning. Would I like to learn more about it? No, my time is not free, unlike KiCAD software. I’ll wait till it become stable and till in response to “here you have a bug, guys” the bug will be fixed instead of saying “it’s not important bug for us, as despite we claim we have a feature – in fact only 1% is using that so we don’t care”.
Thanks for all the answers, it was quite instructively)

29

You do realize the vast majority of people who replied here aren’t KiCad developers, right? This is primarily a user forum. Nobody who actually makes the decisions told you that.

When I get time, I may collect what you have here into a formal bug report and file it to be reviewed by the dev team. If you have found a parser error, it should be fixed.

30

Sorry, I didn’t realize that. Another learning curve needed.))
From the head of this category:

“This category is meant for discussing the software itself, specifically how to build it from source, problems with versions and other quirks you are finding with the software. As a general rule, IF YOU SEE AN ERROR BOX YOU SHOULD POST IN THIS CATEGORY.”

And I saw them, the boxes! Three of them within 2 minutes of try. Sorry for misunderstanding again.

31

Oh sure - this is a good place to discuss errors, I’m not telling you otherwise. This just isn’t the formal bug tracker, so you shouldn’t treat comments here as an official response from the dev team.

Personally, I appreciate having bugs reported here. This is a good place to tidy up bug reports and gather details and information from other affected users before filing a formal report - especially given that Launchpad is a pain. Just remember, you’re going to get responses from regular users too :slight_smile:

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