Moore’s Law at work!
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Everything is relative. In order for you to find the best design program, you need to try and evaluate and compare with others.
I compare according to the following criteria:
- availability of documentation;
- ease of creating libraries of elements;
- convenient design interface;
- 3D modeling. For further installation of the board to the body of the future device. Especially in conjunction with FreeCAD;
- output documentation for ordering a board or assembling boards. Ease of use of this documentation. For assembly, I really like the HTML output file.
- the program works on different operating systems and there are relatively few requirements for computer hardware to be able to design. It requires fewer resources to operate compared to Altium. I can work on both Windows and Linux. I installed Linux on an external SSD, installed KiCAD there and can boot on any computer and work.
- and what is equally important is OPEN SOFTWARE.
I don’t like commercial products that are too expensive and not everything is convenient. Moreover, if Altium were now free, but not open source software, I would still give more preference to KiCAD, according to the criteria that I wrote above. For me Altium is too complicated and not convenient. In my opinion, the best products are created when they are created by a large community and when there is feedback from the consumer.
and yes - taste and color, no friends. everyone chooses what he likes best.
That is very helpful and an excellent account of your position.
I suppose the definition of “best” is crucial, here, and there will be many different interpretations of it. For myself, there are two really important elements: the look, feel and operation of the UI; and a speed-bump-free workflow. Obviously there are other important elements, not least of which is the capability and functionality.
Open source is not important to me, per se, although I obviously appreciate not having to pay a licence fee. But there is no “matter of principle” thing for me, as there obviously is for many people.
Cross-platform is also not important to me, as I always use Windows (I run Linux Mint in a virtual machine, but prefer Windows). In fact, I think cross-platform can be a problem because such programs hardly ever adopt the look, feel and design language of the OS they are running on. Most cross-platform programs look like orphans that don’t belong anywhere, using generic visual elements that look slightly “foreign” to whatever OS you are using.
The other disadvantage of open source is that the applications rarely get as much developer time as the commercial products, so they lag behind when it comes to functionality and keeping up with the operating system design languages. Libre Office is an example - to my eyes it looks ugly and clunky (like it was written for Windows 95 or earlier - oh look, it was), and misses out on some really basic functionality (text selection, for example, is a bit rubbish). Compare its look with Softmaker Office (a proprietary offering in the same space), which is so much cleaner and more modern. Another example: take a look at the Affinity suite from Serif and compare it with any open source graphics editor (or vector or DTP application). It started as a clean sheet design, launched in 2015 after six years of development effort. It’s outstanding, and makes GIMP look amateurish.
So, it turns out we disagree on cross-platform and open source! Having said that, I think KiCAD does well on the UI front. Yes, the menus, toolbars and dialogs look like Windows 98 or thereabouts, but it is learnable, internally consistent and the consistency between different platform versions is excellent.
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While OpenSource is especially valuable for software people that want to tinker with code, the code’s “open-ness” is also realted to open documentation of file formats.
A very nasty caveat may be a software that locks your designs in a version/license prison: you design stuff only to find your OS upgrade broke compatibility with the version of proprietary software you did paid for, and now your current option is subscription model with license allowing to only store your project in the “cloud” (and being able to store projects locally is only available for the Pro Ultra license at 20k/yr)… Although this example is excaberated, it’s not THAT far what companies behind closed-source, proprietary code are doing now.
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I have had several instances during my career where I lost access to proprietary software for various reasons (graduation, job changes, software supplier was acquired, etc.). This resulted in a lot of pain and lost hours. Open source software can have its own problems and pain points, but I have never lost access to years of my own work because of it, unlike expensive proprietary software.
John
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Many commercial products have turned into monsters trying to combine the functions of other programs. As a result, work productivity drops, errors appear and this is clearly not what the user wanted… Quite simple functions turn into a quest and search for solutions with the opening of 10 menus and 50 settings sheets… This trend is observed not only in engineering programs but also in operating ones systems.
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