I have just started looking around Kicad. I find the interface annoying and very confusing and certainly not intuitive.
Now I can’t remember where I was exactly, but I do object to being forced to use the Mils dimension when I set the global units to mm.
I would like to manually set up some nets before I start building my schematic - There is no Nets Icon. Are Nets and Global label the same?
If I use Bus connections why doesn’t it know to expect multiple selections and / or automate the task of connecting the connections to similarly labelled pins on the selected components. - eg A0…A7. What’s this ‘Bus entry’ nonsense?
I don’t understand this ‘Hierarchical Pin’ business or ‘Hierarchical Sheet’ business. Just use an ‘Add Sheet’ icon to add tabbed sheets to the top of the page so we can just quickly click on for them to become active. (now I admit I could be missing some thing here)
Trying to sort out libraries is a nightmare and know which one to use is a complete nightmare!
A suggestion.
To simplify going from paper to Schematic.
Why don’t you have a VERY basic but quick Schematic capture option within EEScheema? Think about the initial designing process when you’re going through ideas - the number of times we rub out pencil lines before the paper sheet looks so horrific and we have to waste time and completely redraw the thing again before the rubbing out starts all over again.
What I mean is at the moment it seems that you have to make a choice on the exact manufacturer and specific component when working in EEschema. I would like to quickly throw a transistor or resistor or whatever on the page and be able to save the design electronically and so it could be printed out again neatly without considering the specifics of the components.
Have some basic components down the side of the screen which prompts you - eg a DIL IC and the prompt would be “How many pins”, or a Transistor and the prompt would be “n-channel, p channel, NPN or PNP”, capacitor could just be “Electrolytic y/n” that sort of thing. All of which could be easily updated later.
The schematic is still in mil but it does not really matter there. You can see it as KiCad unit if you feel more at ease that way. After some time you will not even think about that.
The pcb is completely metric. (one can change the interface to use imperial but the file is still metric)
We even introduced metric size codes for standard two terminal chip packages in addition to the imperial codes. (SMD resistors, caps, …) These parts are also designed in metric. (So as far as i know every place where it matters is metric.)
Not directly. A net that is connected to any label will get its name. It gets complicated as soon as you have multiple labels on the same net. I do not know the priority system used for this from the top of my head but it should be documented somewhere.
And another way to achieve this is by using hierarchical design. I guess this part of your thinking already aligns with it even if you do not like it. (The idea there is to define the hierarchical interface first and work from that. Which is exactly what you describe here.)
It is just another way of doing things. Accept it as it is one of the core philosophies of kicad. (If you play around with it for a while you might even start to like it. There is a reason programmers use multiple layers of abstraction for complex projects. Hierarchical schematic designs allow for exactly that.)
I do not know what you mean here. But be assured that the devs know that the bus feature is very basic in KiCad. Shortly before the feature freeze for v5 there was a lot of talk about some ways to make buses more powerful. I am not sure what got finished in time to get into v5. I fear most of the good ideas will only be implemented after the v5 release and we will need to wait till v6 for it.
Library management could be easier. The good news is that v5 will bring lots of improvements. (For both the management side of things and in the organization of the official libraries)
Having a staging area for some often used parts would indeed be nice. But there are other things with much higher priority that i would like to see first.
The rest of your rant is not worth answering to be honest. If you simply place some dil ic in a schematic you are doing something seriously wrong. A schematic is an abstraction of the function. You should not care about the package something comes in at this point in time. You should care about the fact that you want an op amp. Not pin 5, 6 and 7 of a dil IC.
Like all decent schematic/pcb programs KiCad is a fairly complicated piece of software and it takes a bit of time to get used to it.
A reasonably good way to start is with the KiCad getting started guide: https://kicad.org/help/getting-started/
If you want to quickly draw some components start with typin “a” (from “add”) and start typing.
A opamp [enter] gets me a “Opamp_Dual_Generic”, in KiCad V5.
“a” “r” [enter] gets me a resistor.
“a” “npn” gets me a selection of NPN transistors.
A quick schematic for testing some ideas also does not need “the exact right” component. Just grab a component that looks a bit like what you’re brainstoming. Editing stuff later after a brainstorming session is very easy to do later.
About the blue busses. they are only eye candy. electical connections depend on the wires you draw and on the labels. You might find it symplistic, but I actually like this symplicity. Why add unneeded complexity?
(Hmmm, ill have to find that discussion Rene mentioned)
If you want to place a lot of labels, for example an address bus, press "l"abel, type the fist label name, press [enter] and then every time you hit [insert a new label is inserted. If you label ends with a number, autimatic number increment is triggered.
With the getting started guide I drew my first (very symplistic) PCB in KiCad within a single afternoon, without prior knowledge of KiCad, and I find KiCad a lot easier to work with than about 10 other packages I’ve tried to use over the years, including 3 I’ve paid real money for.
KiCad is the best, and improving steadily in the last few years.
As a beginner maybe you should not worry too much about hierarchical sheets, labels, etc yet.
Start with a single schematic on a single page, then extend your knowledge.
Hierarchical labels follow the hierarcy you draw (first learn how to draw those) and global labels connect wires over multiple sheets. The functionality is there when you need it, but don’t worry about it yet. start simple.
I am really looking forward to seeing this implemented because it brings IC level features into the PCB world. That would be a big step for Kicad.
One caution is that Jon mentions that he can “alias” a group and use that as a shortcut. You really need to put that alias in an external file and not internal to the schematics. Two designers create memory buses from an external alias means that you can join them together simply by connecting them with a bus. Otherwise you will need to supply a mapping to show that Add from one bus is Address in the other.
I am also really looking forward to seeing this implemented. On small schematics it is not too hard to find the connecting labels. However, with a larger schematic it is nice/necessary to have the bus line show exactly every place that the physical traces/wires end up.
That is not true at all; there are generic versions of all common components in the library. This is the way I usually work - I draw with generics, create my own symbols for parts that aren’t in the library or when I want an IC depicted functionally rather than physically, then fill in the values and part numbers and assign footprints later as necessary.
