zlacker

>>fghtr+(OP)
This great Dev Kit design is available for everybody: https://kicad-pcb.org/made-with-kicad/librem_5_dev_kit/ Amazing piece of open source hardware. While I am not interested in cellphones, I might use for robotics project.

>>lnsru+Z3
Here I must praise KiCad. It is one of the best pieces of FOSS software out there. It beats almost all other (commercial or non-commercial) software in PCB design, hands down.

>>m712+p7
> It beats almost all other (commercial or non-commercial) software in PCB design, hands down.

You need to get out more often. Look, I am a KiCAD supporter, too. But KiCAD is repeating the mistakes of commercial ECAD systems of the 1980’s. Am I glad it exists? Surely. But set your sights higher. KiCAD has much room for improvement.

>>dbcurt+99
Would you mind expanding on these mistakes?

>>skumme+Tn
This is entirely subjective, but I think the UI is needlessly unintuitive (but okay compared to other EDA tools), and the parts management seems not well thought out IMO. A similar feeling that e.g. LTSpice gives me: you can get into it, but parts feel arbitrary and other parts feel hacky, and ultimately you never really enjoy it.

My favourite open source EDA tool that IMO does it better is horizon EDA. https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/feature-overvie...

I made quite a few working PCBs with that one already. Downsides are:

- the library is not that big yet (but adding parts is really easy, you can even use inheritance etc)

- won’t run on any old machine because of the OpenGL-version

- if you are not using windows you need to compile yourself

One of the things I really like besides the UI/UX (one button hotkeys!) is the library concept called “pool”, where every part is made up of modular pieces, which makes things reusable and consistent. If you’d like to change the resistor symbol for all resistors you just have to edit in one place, if you feel like making a opamp with eight channels, just duplicate the quad one and add four more opamp units. Their concept takes a moment to sink in, but is incredible flexible and is one of these “why didn’t we do it like that from the start”-ideas.