Circuitmaker vs Eagle vs KiCad vs ??

[zapta]

My point isn't that Eagle is unlearnable. It's simply that it's far harder to use than it needs to be.

I don't think anybody here disagrees with it.

[Kappes Buur]

I have used Proteus, Eagle, Diptrace, Designspark, Target 3001, Kicad, etc in the past to design some simple boards. But none of the programs really sat right with me. There always was some aspect which caused a problem, mainly with having to create symbols and footprints. For me, as a hobbyist, the cost of a full blown version was just not justifiable and the licenses are simply too restrictive. But I made do with the limitations.

Then recently I stumbled upon the Youtube channel for Contextual Electronics and the multipart tutorial Getting To Blinky 4.0 for using Kicad 3.x. Goodness gracious, the improvements made to Kicad are just phenomenal. What an easy program to use now. And it is freeware.

My designs are still not all that complex, just microcontroller stuff, so I don't know how one would fare with it in a professional setting, I would suspect quite favourably though.

[Simon]

KiCAd is ok but is does not quite bling enough for me to use commercially.

[kermitfrog]

When did you try Kicad last? ...it's not your father's Kicad, LOL it's come a long ways. I'm looking forward to the improvements in version 5 which should be released around the end of this month

[Simon]

quite some time ago now and I am also trying to run a business so at the time the prospect of getting up one morning and finding it had been broken by someone was not acceptable and it was buggy at the time so I had to pursue a commercial option and I'm on my third!

[JohnPen]

Just as a hobbyist I have recently tried to use a small number of free CAD programs namely Express, KiCad and Diptrace.  In the case of Express it is overall an expensive solution, although fairly easy to use, because one has to use Express for producing the PCB.   KiCad I found fine for the schematic but it became steadily more difficult when moving to the PCB layout. It does have tremendous flexibility but the learning curve for KiCad was very frustrating.  DipTrace was for me the easiest and certainly the most straightforward.  It allowed me to quickly create a small PCB, 3 channel mixer, with minimum frustration.  I can't answer for Professional use as I do not have that experience and once a particular CAD product is fully understood it obviously becomes much easier to use. However for small scale hobby use ease of learning is very important as one desires results relatively quickly and a long learning curve is very frustrating for what is often an occasional use.  Based on my limited trial of these 3 free packages I found DipTrace the easiest to use and learn.

There are various other free/trial versions of other CAD programs that I have not tried so there may be better or more flexible ones but for my purposes I believe I have found what I needed. If or when I need to exceed the 300 hole limits of free DipTrace that would still be a sensible choice for me.   

[fearless]

Short form: take another look at KiCad.

I know this is resurrecting an old thread, but KiCad v5.0 is in "release candidate" stage and fixes many of the frustrating aspects of its predecessor. 

I've been using it and find its UI to be just as intuitive as Eagle's (read: not very) but I appreciate the lavish use of keyboard shortcuts -- once you learn the "finger macros" it becomes very speedy.  And I tease my friend who pays a hefty annual fee for his Altium with KiCad's 3D renderings -- they look almost as good.

[palpurul]

I used Circuitmaker in the past because I liked the concept of "PCB design community". My experience wasn't really good. Everything that you do is uploaded to the cloud and you virtually reach your design from any computer. This feature seemed real nice if you like open hardware design, but it's slow as hell. Everytime you want to save, open, login or change your design you have to connect to the cloud which is annoying in my opinion. It is really similar to Alitum. If you used Altium in the past learning Circuitmaker is not going to be a nightmare. If you haven't used Altium in the past you kind a learn Altium in the background when learning Circuitmaker.

As you pointed out Circuitmaker has massive library which makes things quicker. You can virtually find any part and modify them for your design.

[Simon]

CM was altiums biggest misjudgement of customers but it did't matter because it's free. Instead of learning from the massive error they went and made matters worse with CS where they piss off paying customers........

[TomS_]

the parts library is a really compelling feature.

Learn how to make your own parts, and you can have as many and what ever you want. 

I spend quite a lot of time these days making my own parts if they either arent available as part of EAGLE, or I dont like the variants they have to offer. Its quite satisfying once youve made the part and can then continue on with your project.

Personally I use EAGLE and I quite like it. It gets a lot of hate, but probably I dont have exposure to enough tools to realise why - in the end it does a job for me and does it well enough that I can be productive. I found that if you spend a couple of hours, watch a few videos on how it works and how to do things, go in to it not expecting anything to work in a particular way, learn to create schematics before doing PCB layout, practice and practice some more, then you might find it also works for you. 

Im still not sure what I think about the Autodesk subscription model, but I think Im gradually wearing down and might purchase one. I umm'd and ahhh'd too long and missed the boat to buy a perpetual license, but I think in the long run the subscription would work out better anyway because it will cover all future versions, rather than just a major version.

[^_^]

I'll just add 3 cents about KiCAD.
I've used it for years, during uni and after.
Then I tried Altium at work which had a license, and man, never looked at KiCAD again

Looking back, from a perspective: KiCAD is great for begginers and overall entry level stuff. But it's Altium (or some other proffesional studio) that will get you places and will count on your resume. Altium's license cost is like nothing from company's POV.

[Simon]

Yes KiCAD became a bit of a joke I don't know what it is like now but I can't keep changing.

[tooki]

I'll just add 3 cents about KiCAD.
I've used it for years, during uni and after.
Then I tried Altium at work which had a license, and man, never looked at KiCAD again

Looking back, from a perspective: KiCAD is great for begginers and overall entry level stuff. But it's Altium (or some other proffesional studio) that will get you places and will count on your resume. Altium's license cost is like nothing from company's POV.

Typical open source GUI app, IMHO. Tons of fans with modest needs calling it the [commercial app] killer, but lacking the features true professionals need. No, Writer is not equivalent to MS Word. No, the Gimp is not equivalent to Photoshop. And no, KiCAD is not equivalent to Altium.

[Simon]

Typical open source GUI app, IMHO. Tons of fans with modest needs calling it the [commercial app] killer, but lacking the features true professionals need. No, Writer is not equivalent to MS Word. No, the Gimp is not equivalent to Photoshop. And no, KiCAD is not equivalent to Altium.

Yup and then when you have a problem it's a case of well what do you expect for free....

[jgalak]

I don't think KiCad is trying to be the equivalent of Altium.  I think it's trying to be the equivalent of Eagle.

[Simon]

I don't think anyone wants it to be the equivalent of anything, just a functioning program for the poor sods that use it would be a good start.

[hendorog]

I'll just add 3 cents about KiCAD.
I've used it for years, during uni and after.
Then I tried Altium at work which had a license, and man, never looked at KiCAD again

Looking back, from a perspective: KiCAD is great for begginers and overall entry level stuff. But it's Altium (or some other proffesional studio) that will get you places and will count on your resume. Altium's license cost is like nothing from company's POV.

Typical open source GUI app, IMHO. Tons of fans with modest needs calling it the [commercial app] killer, but lacking the features true professionals need. No, Writer is not equivalent to MS Word. No, the Gimp is not equivalent to Photoshop. And no, KiCAD is not equivalent to Altium.

The open source products don't need to be equivalent to the top end closed source product to be of value. True professionals who need and would benefit from Altium are pretty common around here, but not so common in the average workplace.

Much more frustrating are the people who swear black and blue they need the likes of Word or Photoshop, but really have basic needs and could use nearly any similar product. I see this very often at work with MS Office products. Brand whoring at its finest.

[Simon]

Yes work places like standards and despite MS office offering to use open document formats it still warns you you could loose data if you save a new file with them and encourages you to use MS formats

[jgalak]

I don't think anyone wants it to be the equivalent of anything, just a functioning program for the poor sods that use it would be a good start.

I tried KiCad years ago, and hated it.  Used Eagle.  I tried it again this year, because I was annoyed at the Autodesk Eagle phone-home thing, and absolutely love it.  Admittedly, I'm very much a novice/hobbyist, but for what I do it works just fine, and is no more (or less) obtuse than Eagle was - just different.

I'd love to use Altium - but until they come out with a $49.99 version, it ain't gonna happen...

ETA:  I'm also about to start work on an open hardware project, and using KiCad has a big advantage there - potential users of the project aren't forced to buy a commercial program to be able to open the design files.

[Electro Fan]

This is a pretty good review/comparison of several products in this category:

https://www.sfcircuits.com/pcb-school/pcb-design-software-comparison-guide

[VEGETA]

I'd love to use Altium - but until they come out with a $49.99 version, it ain't gonna happen...

Yes, it won't happen. 

If I were them, I would have made CircuitStudio only and without CM. Then you could get a free version which is limited and a 50$ one which is a big bigger than the free version and also commercial. Then a 200$ or so...etc. Dave talked about this numerous times but they never listen and ever since I get into eevblog forum years ago I hear about Altium being stupid for no reason. I just lived enough to see it.

Let's not joke ourselves, CM is nice but it is not and will not be the standard like eagle used to be. They offered us altium designer features for free which is good but also put too much limitations which killed it such as cloud-based only BS.

Typical open source GUI app, IMHO. Tons of fans with modest needs calling it the [commercial app] killer, but lacking the features true professionals need. No, Writer is not equivalent to MS Word. No, the Gimp is not equivalent to Photoshop. And no, KiCAD is not equivalent to Altium.

It is not the case here, KiCAD is not aiming at altium or even eagle IMO. Kicad is simply a complete open source package for PCB design that does the job well with 0$.

If you argue about X being bad because it is not equivalent to Altium, then everything else is bad such as eagle and diptrace... and they cost $$$ while kicad is free.

The good thing about kicad is that lots of people and corporations support it, which can lead to sustained improvement (unlike most open source stuff which gets dumped)... such as CERN (or SERN? if you get the joke xD >> which will cause dystopia for human race in future).

For me, I like CM and will use it soon when I finish some projects, but if I am gonna get trouble with it then I will use KiCAD.

[Simon]

Yes KiCAD became a bit of a joke I don't know what it is like now but I can't keep changing.

Malcolm Macleod made a reproduction PCB of an old 1980's computer using Kicad. So it isn't a joke.
http://avitech.com.au/?page_id=3132#jp-carousel-3140

He has a blog here http://avitech.com.au/

I'll in include two relevant images from his website for members convenience.

Given time and determination I'm sure you can do anything with KiCAD but some of us have to live in the commercial world where reasonable guarantee of a program to open and update the design with in 5 years time is attractive as is getting some sort of support. I once set about using KiCAD but became very uneasy.

Somehow I once signed up to the developer list and witnessed a big fall out over a contributor not following the agreed protocols for releasing new code and it looked like the whole thing was going to grind to a halt, the scarier thing was that me throwing in some comments to help reconcile the situation seemed to help and I was nobody. I can't rely commercially on software produced like that - this was some years ago and i know the project leadership has changed but I'm sorry. Again what would be more useful to me is an open and recognised standard format for libraries and maybe even project files.

[Wolfram]

Yes KiCAD became a bit of a joke I don't know what it is like now but I can't keep changing.

Malcolm Macleod made a reproduction PCB of an old 1980's computer using Kicad. So it isn't a joke.
http://avitech.com.au/?page_id=3132#jp-carousel-3140

He has a blog here http://avitech.com.au/

I'll in include two relevant images from his website for members convenience.

Given time and determination I'm sure you can do anything with KiCAD but some of us have to live in the commercial world where reasonable guarantee of a program to open and update the design with in 5 years time is attractive as is getting some sort of support. I once set about using KiCAD but became very uneasy.

Somehow I once signed up to the developer list and witnessed a big fall out over a contributor not following the agreed protocols for releasing new code and it looked like the whole thing was going to grind to a halt, the scarier thing was that me throwing in some comments to help reconcile the situation seemed to help and I was nobody. I can't rely commercially on software produced like that - this was some years ago and i know the project leadership has changed but I'm sorry. Again what would be more useful to me is an open and recognised standard format for libraries and maybe even project files.

You are basically implying that open source tools can not be relied upon for professional work, there are plenty of counterexamples in the real world. As for the capabilities of the recent versions of Altium, I have done commercial designs for production in both Altium and Kicad (30 kW DSP controlled SiC power converters, both isolated and non-isolated) and KiCAD is a perfectly adequate tool for the job, improving with every version. I agree that KiCAD is not completely up to the level of Altium yet, but it is not far behind.

[Mr. Scram]

Given time and determination I'm sure you can do anything with KiCAD but some of us have to live in the commercial world where reasonable guarantee of a program to open and update the design with in 5 years time is attractive as is getting some sort of support. I once set about using KiCAD but became very uneasy.

Somehow I once signed up to the developer list and witnessed a big fall out over a contributor not following the agreed protocols for releasing new code and it looked like the whole thing was going to grind to a halt, the scarier thing was that me throwing in some comments to help reconcile the situation seemed to help and I was nobody. I can't rely commercially on software produced like that - this was some years ago and i know the project leadership has changed but I'm sorry. Again what would be more useful to me is an open and recognised standard format for libraries and maybe even project files.

The same happens to paid packages. They get assimilated by a company or competitor and development can suddenly take a left turn. You have all your boards and IP stuck in there at that point.

[paulca]

When I tried to add a common part to my test project it was lacking a footprint.  My thought was "do I have to build every part from scratch?! I'd gladly pay to have them already created." 

The default KiCad installer only comes with a subset of the full libraries.  On top of the official GitHub respository of components, footprints and 3D models there are loads of 3rd party ones and they are very easy to install with the github URLs or unzipping them.