Need Advice: Evaluating KiCad for our Company

Pardon me, but that seems to me the silly remark. Nobody suggested it should come with a full database.

Actually kicad does not really any better for VCS as any binary file. The file format is too fragmented due to using GUID’s as sorting criteria.

So no. Kicad isn’t great in this regard

Maybe everybody should stop calling the other’s suggestions silly. Let’s keep this forum respectful, at least minimally.

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In my opinion it is exactly the opposite, the current workflow works better in well organized groups of a certain number of designers where there is a person (group) in charge of the Libraries and codification of new parts, and an arbitrary number of designers who just use the libraries.

Are you telling that in your organization any designer can push stuff on the libraries :grimacing:?
That is in my opinion the best recipe to cook a perfect disaster!

Your libraries should be treated as the most valuable asset for successful design and protected at all cost.

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Once the dust settles, I hope you’ll be able to come back with a post-mortem about what tool was eventually chosen for your company and the deciding factors.

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All EDAs work better in one person teams. No matter how big is the company.

How many people works in the same pcb project at a time? From my experience, maybe two or three, one most of the time.
I mean the pcb, not the whole project. In our case, one person makes the enclosure, one person makes the firmware. They work together with the circuit designers (maybe one is in charge of the schematic and another one of the placement and routing).

The libraries are run by one and only one person.
We use git with an external semaphore when needed, but usually is not needed since the layouter starts after the schematic has been finished.

We have a response from KiPro. I spoke with management and we agreed that these guys are most likely be able to give all the answers to all the aspects. I’ll surely keep you updated!

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The latest database / collaborative solution from Altium is called Altium 365 (which is available as on premise server as well) at is based on Git. It seems to be very mature in terms of collaborative library database management and workflows. It surely is quite a benchmark with all the difference viewing and commenting / reviewing functions natively included into the tool. Be sure to take a look at this, we were mildly impressed.

someone started Ki365 Ki365 · GitLab
seems to be something similar to Altium365 (but for Kicad :upside_down_face:)

I personally do not use either of them.

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Yea but it’s a separate platform from Alitum itself which does not come with 365 by default.

The functionality of 365 is also mostly out of scope for the KiCad project. It’s more of a web based experience than desktop.

I know. Why does this matter?

for Altium365 you pay extra…

That is not an issue as long as it is worth it (i guess). I have no overview about the budgetary constraints.

Different situation here, but an employer of mine currently uses Altium. However, we have invested in Kicad and all new PCB design seats are going to KiCad. We use the same component database for both software. This is something of a chore because we have two sets each of footprints and symbols, one for Altium and one for KiCad. However, the pain is fairly small compared to having two separate databases.

Something to consider in your decision is after-sale customer service. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell what this might be before a purchasing commitment is made. It is worth trying to research this in depth.

John

Fortunately at least for Altium, I know what to expect :wink: . No further comments.

Usually this is the problem… The project budget has a limitation and Altium is a tool that costs a lot of money and has its own subscription pitfalls

At one time, an eagle was bought, now it has retired) this is how you can quickly and quietly kill a project

Hi there,

I am working for a company that considers itself a global player and therefore all our layouters will confirm they need the most professional EDA tool available. :nerd_face:

Matter of fact every PCB I encounter in production could be easily made with KiCad ! Our Layouts are intentionally conservative and standard technology.

Biggest obstacle for KiCad (apart from reputation) is the missing integration into production equipment, logistics, SAP and so on.
We have lots of engineers but I doubt there is one that would be able to create all these interfaces as plug ins or participate in KiCad development.

And its true, buying something overpriced and locking yourself in is much more accepted in a big company than using the money for people and knowledge.

Nevertheless I think KiCad will add such features step by step in the long range …

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My experience is that the SAP is rarely integrated properly purchasing and logistics, too many silos.

KiCad cannot do the electromagnetic modelling needed for some RF designs - very expensive niche tasks that you find more with Mentor than Altium

This has been one of my big frustrations with KiCad also. I use KiCad all of the time for circuit boards but would like to use it as a schematic capture tool for spice. I do ASIC design and you need to be able to create unique blocks with unique references. You have a block UBLOCK with transistors X1 and X2. You are unable to instantiate UBLOCK and have UBLOCK1 and UBLOCK2 in other words UBLOCK1.X1 and UBLOCK2.X1 be unique. Currently, KiCad just flattens everything and X1 in UBLOCK1 is equivalent to X1 in UBLOCK2 which is a problem when it comes to spice simulation.