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[return to "Why does the Librem 5 phone cost that much?"]
1. lnsru+Z3[view] [source] 2019-11-28 12:04:54
>>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.
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2. m712+p7[view] [source] 2019-11-28 12:37:55
>>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.
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3. dbcurt+99[view] [source] 2019-11-28 12:53:27
>>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.

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4. skumme+Tn[view] [source] 2019-11-28 15:11:47
>>dbcurt+99
Would you mind expanding on these mistakes?
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5. rnestl+rH[view] [source] 2019-11-28 17:51:40
>>skumme+Tn
Some of the most annoying things for me in KiCAD are (or were, maybe some of them got fixed):

* Projects not standalone / portable across computers, which makes collaborating hard.

* Parts library management is not intuitive. Lots of confusing UI around library paths for example.

* Footprint assignment should be handled automatically or at least provide sensible suggestions instead of every footprint with the same amount of pads.

But there are two promising alternatives around: Horizon EDA, which the sibling post already mentioned, and LibrePCB (https://librepcb.org).

I personally only used LibrePCB for some project and it worked quite well, apart from some missing features, like missing design rule check. But the upcoming 0.1.3 release adds quite some of them.

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