Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling

Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by mmac_ on Sunday January 28, 2024 @06:05AM (#39164482)

Kicad is the best free EDA I've used and I know many others that use it. The active development and large community make it a no-brainer.

I use Altium professionally ($$$) and I feel like Kicad could cover most of the boards I work on. FYI I've seen a few advanced PCB's done in Kicad successfully - just not sure how much manual calculations/work they had to do.

Kicad + the cheap online PCB vendors are a killer combination.

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by 533474 on Sunday January 28, 2024 @06:55AM (#39164813)

Do you have any example(s) of an advanced KiCAD board?

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by junon on Sunday January 28, 2024 @08:32AM (#39165558)

https://github.com/oro-os/link/tree/master/pcb/link-x86-obt

Not the best laid out PCB or the best project structure. But it works, and it's fairly complex.

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by mntmn on Sunday January 28, 2024 @08:15AM (#39165406)

I've made 2 laptops in KiCAD:

https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform

https://source.mnt.re/reform/pocket-reform

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by lovelearning on Sunday January 28, 2024 @10:53AM (#39166850)

This is the most awesome thing I've come across on HN in recent months if not years!

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by ruslan on Sunday January 28, 2024 @02:29PM (#39168990)

> Made With

> KiCAD EDA > OpenSCAD > LUFA > Autodesk Fusion (Case parts)

This is really awesome. Kudos for KiCAD and OpenSCAD.

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by mr337 on Monday January 29, 2024 @10:35AM (#39177436)

That is impressive!

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by cushychicken on Sunday January 28, 2024 @07:25AM (#39165026)

Kicad has a bunch of examples of boards made with Kicad on their homepage.

Tons of stuff on par with a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black, with DRAM, eMMC, and PCIe routing, plus all the fine pitch placements for supporting circuitry. PMICs get dense in these applications.

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by MegaDeKay on Sunday January 28, 2024 @10:07AM (#39166433)

Another example: the HackRF SDR board was done in KiCAD

https://github.com/greatscottgadgets/hackrf

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Re:Ask HN: Best open source and/or free EDA tooling by ruslan on Sunday January 28, 2024 @02:49PM (#39169151)

Here's my OSHW FPGA board made in KiCAD: https://github.com/Fabmicro-LLC/Karnix_ASB-254

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr0pdGuJbXQ

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