Our company uses EasyPC because the senior engineer likes it. It works fine, but several of us have been using Kicad and want to at least make it an option for those of us who want to use it. We were fighting a losing battle until recently when we had 3 designs come to us for modifications/additions, and the source files were all from Kicad. The senior engineer’s proposal was to redraw them all and charge the customer for that effort. Instead, our Kicad users made the mods and were done in a matter of a few hours. Believe me - that got noticed - not only by our managers, but also by the client - who was happy to have had the changes made inexpensively. Kicad is gaining traction here. The biggest hurdles to its adoption are the amount of existing projects that are in other formats, and the huge amount of library components that we have custom made for EasyPC. I understand the effort that would have to be made to convert all of that, but why does it all have to be done at once? Converting only what you need as you need it would get us there over time, and that’s pretty much how it worked to get us where we are on EasyPC too.
Just so you know guys, been reading all of this and those stories are pretty cool. Keep em coming!
Thanks for all the great and helpful advice. We are going to move forward with KiCAD and slowly transfer over the OrCAD files when their time comes. This was a very reassuring thread
Well, after using 10+ CAD tool in the last 15 years I can say that KiCad is already good enough to replace the lower and lower-middle level commercial tools (e.g. CADSTAR, Eagle, P-CAD) and I believe that with the new schematic format overhaul it will be able to compete with OrCAD and PADS.
Personally I used KiCad to develop a PCIe card with more that ten 5 Gbps differential lanes.
After 1 CAD tool in the past 1 year I know KiCAD is good enough for me. I have no idea why anyone would want to start with proprietary software. KiCAD or its decendants will be here for a loooooong time.
I went through a similar process last year. We are a small company with some legacy PCB designs kicking off a new project. I received quotes in the $5k - $10k range from the usual commercial packages, plus maintenance fees. Things I was looking for:
- +10 layer support
- No size restrictions
- Matched length differential pair routing (600 Mbps to 5 Gbps)
- 3D export to MCAD
In the end, I went with KiCAD due to the major jump in cost to get those last two features in a commercial package. Plus, the ability to not be beholden to a vendor and easily hand parts of the project others (now and in the future) without incurring extra cost. Honestly, it was the fact that CERN had just added matched differential pair routing that put KiCAD over the edge. I took a risk on the 3D MCAD support, but @maui released StepUp filling that gap.
There are quite a few companies (medium and small) using kicad, including SoftPLC who contributed a lot to the development of kicad for a number of years. I hear (third hand) that many CERN contractors also use it, but I forgot to ask for a first-hand account when I met the guys from CERN. The short story is, you need to look at the features you require and spend some time working with KiCad to evaluate it for your specific use. No doubt there will be some adjustments to make even if you do use KiCad for future projects; parts management / BOM for example.
My comrades are still using OrCad Layout. Not wanting to learn a legacy software I started on OrCad PCB Editor. It is a fantastic, complicated, industrial tool. My biggest issue with PCB Editor is the assumption you are part a of team 100+ engineers and have a team just to right Skil scripts to customize the editor. KiCad can do 90% of what PCB Editor can do but is much more stream lined. If your not designing a 12+ layer MOBO then KiCad is an easier user experience IMHO. I have personally made several commercial boards successfully in KiCad.
I too am an Eagle user. Last update was to vsn 7. After hearing that Altium was preparing a $$$ Noose for me I am beginning to study KiCad. Eagle support was always good and prices weren’t bad. I’m sorry for Ed Robledo and the guys at Eagle.
We started using Kicad for prototypes in late 2004. My first board got to market in 2006. Since then many boards for different clients.
The decision was quite easy: working under Linux was a must, not negotiable. And we quickly discarded the other option.
Now, quite a lot small and medium companies are using Kicad for professional work.
I have been using KiCad commercially for a number of years now.
Key driver for me was the ascii text based file formats where I felt much more in control of my destiny so to speak.
Particularly when I was investing time and effort in library symbols and footprints I wanted to be sure that I could access and control that data (now and in the future) and not be locked in to having to use some vendor proprietary DB format.
On that note I really like the ability to version control my libraries and designs with standard tools like Git and being able to see the changes with standard text diff tools.
Hi,
I am new here on the forum and just wanted to share my experiences on this
topic. I have been a long time user of DOS UltiCap and UltiBoard for all our
designs since the mid 1980’s if I remember correctly. Even got it upgraded to
the NI multiim version under that awful windows bloatware.
But since a few years back I have switched to kicad on debian Linux, never
looked back 
Apart from some things in the schematic and circuit board program that can be
done (programming) a LOT better it, more professional if you will, I am very pleased
with it.
Using kicad for reasonable complex designs, nothing high frequency though.
roelof
My company has been using KiCAD since past 4-5 years.
Yeah , people contributing on this forum are great !
Yes, We are using KiCAD. The AutoRouting features(It’s not an ideal but hey it’s there and it works), Greate community, and freeware make it my first choice.
using it full time in industry
I make several PCB designs a year using KiCAD. I find it better and much easier to use than Eagle and a lot less expensive than Orcad and Altium. I never laid out a PCB in Orcad, we had specialist people to that. I have used Altium and found the learning curve to be very long and steep. I did not like Eagle at all.
KiCAD as well as EAGLE, Orcad and Altium all have their quirks, things that don’t quite work like you might prefer and I am always creating parts and footprints in any program that I use, so, it probably doesn’t mater.
They tried to solve this problem in the 90’s by creating the EDIF standard,(Electronic Data Interchange Format) but it failed. It was an ambiguous in spots so no two vendors implemented it in exactly the same way. Everyone had their own “flavor” of EDIF and no two vendors could exchange data. It’s almost like they didn’t want us to be able to take our data.
John Eaton
I’ve been using KiCAD professionally as a contractor. I am still at 4.0.7 because my workload has not allowed me yet to upgrade to KiCAD5. Yes, KiCAD’s user interface a bit quirky, but KiCAD works. I also want to stress that, because KiCAD is open source, there is extensive third-party support for it.
I use KiCAD in combination with FreeCAD, an open-source mechanical package. Again, since FreeCAD is open source, it enjoys extensive third-party support. People have been able to “marry” these two great pieces of software with scripts like StepUP (in FreeCAD), which makes 3D modeling of a pcb and its components a breeze. (This can be important, for example, when you need to know the pcb will fit in an existing system.) Others have been able to even run in FreeCAD thermal simulations of a populated pcb, which was imported from KiCAD into FreeCAD.
I have done work with recently-released camera chips; that requires handling multi-Gbps data rates but also very precise placement of certain components (the camera chip is the most obvious one, but also connectors, which define the relative position of pcbs) to statisfy the optical requirements of the system. The combination of KiCAD and FreeCAD with the the third-party support like StepUP (hats off to Maui!) have proven a very effective tool. Another script that greatly helps is the KiCost script, which looks at the BOM file from KiCAD, scrapes distributors’ web sites, and compiles a BOM in a spreadsheet, which you can then copy and paste in the ordering page that accepts text entry. (I have done it on the Digikey site; it saved me quite a bit of time vs. entering each component separately in the order.)
I have also used OrCAD, up to version 16.3 I think. I found it to be very buggy and unstable. In fact, I’ve heard people call it “OrCRAP” and I agree with them. At the moment, I think the only thing KiCAD is not good at is library management. It would be nice to have a data base with actual component values so when I need, say, a 10k 0402 resistor, I can just pull it from the database with all fields appropriately filled. There have been efforts to address this.
Here are some pertinent URLs which describe some of the third-party scripts for KiCAD. The information may be a bit dated, but is still very relevant:
https://hackaday.com/2015/12/05/kicad-utilities-generate-parts-track-costs/ (KiCost, KiPart)
https://sourceforge.net/p/kicadstepup/wiki/Home/ (StepUP)
https://hackaday.com/2018/02/10/whats-coming-in-kicad-version-5/ (Extras of KiCAD5, including importing Eagle files)
These days, Digikey, UltraLibrarian, and snapEDA directly support KiCAD among the “big boys.”
NB. Some people confuse “Free” with “Open Source.” These two are not identical. Somebody may write code and post it for free, perhaps with a disclaimer not to be sued for damages. On the other hand, an open-source program can enforce quality standards and obligate the inclusion of the source code, depending on the open-source license. A complex program like KiCAD is not necessarily free because it has a steep learning curve and time is money.
Interesting experience that you shared with us! Hope you start soon using KiCad5 to take more advantage of 3D CAD: STEP import and export, improved 3D viewer with realistic integrated raytracing 3D render. Still StepUP is very useful for KiCadV5.
What does StepUp offer that’s not now built into KiCad v5?