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Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by paulryanrogers on Friday December 24, 2021 @05:41PM (#29678469)
Do any professionals here use it? I did some AutoCAD in high school and tried this years ago. It felt competent and less crashy than late 90s AutoCAD, but a little more awkward.
Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by bcantrill on Friday December 24, 2021 @06:10PM (#29678686)
We are using it for essentially all of our prototype boards here at Oxide (low complexity, low layer count) -- and keeping a very close eye on it for our larger boards, where we still suffer from proprietary software. (And to be clear, when I say "suffer", I don't mean the mere principle but the true pathologies of proprietary software: license servers dying; licenses expiring incorrectly; software dying, costing lost work; formats being proprietary; etc. etc., all of which we saw over the course of building our boards.) We've been waiting for KiCAD 6 for a while, and while it's not yet to the point that we can use it for everything, it's definitely on the right trajectory!
Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by e-_pusher on Friday December 24, 2021 @09:22PM (#29679750)
If you don’t mind me asking, what EDA tool are you guys using at the moment at Oxide for your motherboards?
Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by bcantrill on Sunday December 26, 2021 @05:42PM (#29697070)
Sorry, missed this question! We are (like many/most?) using OrCAD for schematic capture and Allegro for layout -- which is to say, Cadence and Cadence.
Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by myself248 on Friday December 24, 2021 @07:46PM (#29679240)
Yeah, 5.x has been our standard at $dayjob for a while; we have a few Altium seats for high-end stuff, but most of our day-to-day prototype stuff is done in Kicad. We've completely ditched Eagle.

And obviously for my after-hours stuff it's all kicad, all the time. I've been playing with 5.99 for a while and I'm very excited for a 6.0.0 stable.

Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by Findecanor on Friday December 24, 2021 @05:48PM (#29678528)
KiCAD is and "EDA tool" for designing electronic circuits and circuit boards.

I'd recommend QCad for pure 2D CAD otherwise. I like it and use it a lot. I've never tried classic AutoCAD but I've been told that they are similar.

Re:KiCad 6.0.0 by R0b0t1 on Friday December 24, 2021 @05:47PM (#29678514)
Yes. Not suitable for very high density designs yet, like a motherboard. But you can layout high-speed differential designs with more effort than, say, Altium. But these tools with good auto-routing are very expensive.