Author Topic: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?  (Read 72936 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline timofonicTopic starter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 904
  • Country: es
  • Eternal Wannabe Geek
gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« on: June 08, 2015, 03:01:03 pm »
Hello.

I currently use Eagle, but I would like to switch to Open Source EDA software.

I tried KiCad and I find the interface very weird and difficult to use for me. KiCad still has an awful library manager too, I hope it improves someday.

I was unable to use gEDA again, I might give it another try.

I would like to know the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each other.

Thanks in advance!
 

Offline jsquaredz

  • Contributor
  • Posts: 45
  • Country: us
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2015, 03:17:17 pm »

Hello.

I currently use Eagle, but I would like to switch to Open Source EDA software.

I tried KiCad and I find the interface very weird and difficult to use for me. KiCad still has an awful library manager too, I hope it improves someday.

I was unable to use gEDA again, I might give it another try.

I would like to know the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each other.

Thanks in advance!

I'm pretty sure the future of open source EDA software is KiCAD.  The software is being pretty heavily developed right now.  Just to give you a quick idea of whats going on, the Dev team had to do a lot of plumbing changes to make a lot of the UI /library management items possible to implement.  That said I think most of that is done and there is a new release coming in the next month or two.  After that they will start to tackle the usability issues to turn it into best in class EDA.  In CERN's mission for this effort they claim they will make KiCAD an open source package that is equivalent to the best Professional tools. 

If you are downloading the stable build today it is basically software released in 2012 with some bug fixes along the way, but all the interesting stuff has been happening in the development branch. 

There are multiple easy ways to install the current version of KiCAD.

Windows http://www2.futureware.at/~nickoe/
MAC OS X http://downloads.kicad-pcb.org/osx/
Ubunutu Linux  https://code.launchpad.net/~js-reynaud/+archive/ubuntu/ppa-kicad

All this info is here.  http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/KICAD/Installing+KiCad
 

Offline Bassman59

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2501
  • Country: us
  • Yes, I do this for a living
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2015, 04:49:38 pm »
I tried KiCad and I find the interface very weird and difficult to use for me. KiCad still has an awful library manager too, I hope it improves someday.

What version of Kicad were you using, and what did you find to be "awful" about it?

Quote
I was unable to use gEDA again, I might give it another try.

gEDA was a horrible clusterfuck with an incomprehensible library system and creating parts involved using m4 macros which was just obtuse. Plus, it never built properly on OS X due to a dependency whose maintainer was openly hostile to the Mac. Has it been improved in the several years since I looked at it? Dunno. But Kicad (especially bleeding-edge builds) works and you can make boards with it without much fuss.

-a
 

Offline timofonicTopic starter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 904
  • Country: es
  • Eternal Wannabe Geek
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #3 on: June 09, 2015, 02:22:22 pm »
I tried KiCad and I find the interface very weird and difficult to use for me. KiCad still has an awful library manager too, I hope it improves someday.

What version of Kicad were you using, and what did you find to be "awful" about it?

Quote
I was unable to use gEDA again, I might give it another try.

gEDA was a horrible clusterfuck with an incomprehensible library system and creating parts involved using m4 macros which was just obtuse. Plus, it never built properly on OS X due to a dependency whose maintainer was openly hostile to the Mac. Has it been improved in the several years since I looked at it? Dunno. But Kicad (especially bleeding-edge builds) works and you can make boards with it without much fuss.

-a

I built it a month ago using AUR, it took ages to built. I find the interface too frustrating to use, I was able to replicate a simple 741 exercise from class in "just" a few hours. It was difficult to move objects and place lines, the lack of back annotation made my n00b mistakes even more frustrating than it already is and made me insa e. I yet have to find about creating parts in KiCad. in Eagle and I'm an awful drawer that prefer to use some standard symbols than put my GREAT drawing talent just to do a shit after tons of times later. It's hard to explain, I find it like an application for CAD nerds (I'm unable to use AutoCAD too). Maybe I'm too stupid for this smart software, it's very possible.


Many essential components weren't available on the library, but I understand they don't have tons of followers and Ultra Librarian doesn't support KiCad (the software seems outdated and bloated crap, but it does it's job well). And the library manager is a total mess, even worse than Eagle but not worse than DipTrace (nice software, but that shitty library manager makes it useless). Where's advanced taxonomy and tagging like when finding something in Octopart? That's the way to go, and "favorites" and "recent" tags too.

They need to go the LibreOffice way: Get funds to make a foundation, electronic small/medium companies and education institutions could invest on it. While that would  happens, some nice nerdy devs would provide improvements for more marginal stuff but no less interesting for certain people :)
 

Offline c4757p

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7799
  • Country: us
  • adieu
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #4 on: June 09, 2015, 02:37:53 pm »
Drawing symbols occasionally is part of using any EDA package. Nobody is asking you to be an artist, but if you can't hack out a symbol for a transistor you probably can't lay out a PCB either... :-BROKE

(Also note that the foundations for all the basic devices are there, you shouldn't have to draw your own from scratch.)
No longer active here - try the IRC channel if you just can't be without me :)
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2015, 03:56:19 am »
Ok I am a gEDA user. I have been for over 10 years now. I don't question that kicad might be more user friendly because of how gEDA is designed to have a user defined workflow. This makes it easier to automate, something few EDA packages really do as well IMHO. It was geared around people calling all of it's different utilities from the command line, scripts or makefiles. That said there is a gui just for people who only want to take a schematic and make a board from it. It also has hierarchical design.

Bassman 59 describe the M4 system as a "cluster fuck." Please understand you don't have to use that. The M4 option is there so that you can have programatically defined properties in your footprints. For example some people like being able to change SMT pad lengths for hand assembly on prototypes and then shrink them back down automatically for reflow assembled boards.

For any EDA package you have to track what symbols and footprints you use with model number components.

Looking to see what gEDA library looks like now? It is available here. No need to install anything.
http://www.gedasymbols.org/

Yes CERN has pumped some coding time into kicad that has added some PCB layout features which I am a little jealous of however kicad seems to have more reliability issues. gEDA is *very* reliable. I am currently on both developer mailing lists because both communities are working to create a more common code base. We are all tired of duplicating work.
 

Offline EEVblog

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 37661
  • Country: au
    • EEVblog
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2015, 05:32:25 am »
I interviewed gEDA's main (only?) PCB module developer, DJ Delorie:


I got the impression that gEDA was basically a personal play thing compared to KiCAD, but that was 4 years ago.
I don't really know anyone who uses gEDA, but KiCAD is common and gaining big momemtum and has CERN behind it, that alone says probably all you need to know.
 

Offline mark03

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 708
  • Country: us
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #7 on: June 19, 2015, 04:28:04 pm »
Biggest one for me:  gEDA lets you sprinkle vias anywhere you like, whereas KiCAD thinks that vias are only used on traces, forcing you to create fake traces when stitching planes, etc.  If you do it wrong, the trace and its vias get zapped and you have to start over.  So frustrating.
 

Offline timofonicTopic starter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 904
  • Country: es
  • Eternal Wannabe Geek
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2015, 08:35:10 am »
Ok I am a gEDA user. I have been for over 10 years now. I don't question that kicad might be more user friendly because of how gEDA is designed to have a user defined workflow. This makes it easier to automate, something few EDA packages really do as well IMHO. It was geared around people calling all of it's different utilities from the command line, scripts or makefiles. That said there is a gui just for people who only want to take a schematic and make a board from it. It also has hierarchical design.

Bassman 59 describe the M4 system as a "cluster fuck." Please understand you don't have to use that. The M4 option is there so that you can have programatically defined properties in your footprints. For example some people like being able to change SMT pad lengths for hand assembly on prototypes and then shrink them back down automatically for reflow assembled boards.

For any EDA package you have to track what symbols and footprints you use with model number components.

Looking to see what gEDA library looks like now? It is available here. No need to install anything.
http://www.gedasymbols.org/

Yes CERN has pumped some coding time into kicad that has added some PCB layout features which I am a little jealous of however kicad seems to have more reliability issues. gEDA is *very* reliable. I am currently on both developer mailing lists because both communities are working to create a more common code base. We are all tired of duplicating work.[/b]
I didn't know about it before!

Could you please provide more info about this? Are there some planning about it?

Those are really good news! I'm very happy to know it! Joining in common goals is very needed for OSS projects.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2015, 08:38:15 am by Circuiteromalaguito »
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2015, 01:19:51 am »
@Dave, as much as I hate to say this compared to altium, orcad or protel all opensource EDA is really a personal play thing because of user base. KiCAD has some disadvantages that to me are kind of glaring but I am more interested in adding things than starting/being in a flame ware. The UI experience of gEDA might feel like a toy if you are new to the *nix way of thinking about things but after you get used to it there are things you realize are possible that would be very hard if no impossible to do in a "modern" integrated GUI. Keep in mind I started out as an electronics hobbyist who took up Linux way later on.

@Circuiteromalaguito there was a meeting this year at FOSDEM in Belgium. The videos are for some reason not posted on their website yet but you can find them here. https://video.fosdem.org/2015/
The project is supposed to be hosted here http://edacore.org/
You can see the gEDA half of the dialogue here http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.cad.geda.user/45312
The KiCAD part is on a mailing list you have to join yahoo us access here https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/kicad-users/info

The folks who do circuit simulation where there (icarus, gnucap, ng-spice and etc) as were the EDA people from QUCS, KiCAD and gEDA. One person proposed EDAcore and started a dialogue that has span both the gEDA, KiCAD and newly minted EDAcore mailing lists. It has ebbed and flowed since then. I get the impression a number of us are quietly hacking away at things but no group work has kicked off so far.

I really like the gEDA devs but they have their ideas of how things should go. They have not included a lot of contributions of the years because they were not in the same language as their other code or did not meet their coding standards. To be fair even some of DJ's stuff never got included. This has limited the functionality of the gEDA suite with out these 3rd party widgets. It has however made the suite run very reliably. The PCB tool has had it's issues but with extensive testing it passes. I am hoping that PCB getting doxygen documentation will help speed things along.

There has been talk of incorporating some of CERN's contributions to KiCAD as they were written to be portable between suites. However most people who have looked at the PCB tool that is paired with gEDA will tell you the source is a mess. gEDA and the PCB tool have different origins and PCB's architecture was never so carefully controlled. The gEDA source code I can read the PCB source just confuses the heck out of me. Eventually DJ or one of the Peters pointed out to me that it has no unified concept of what a PCB is. I get the impression from people that KiCAD's PCB tool has architectural issues of it's own though possibly less seriously. I get the impression that basically both groups want to flush out the mess their current code has them in before combining forces.

My *personal* hope in the short term is that we work on compatibility with non-free software formats because right now.
OrCAD - gEDA has this in a limited way (I have never used it). It should get cleaned up and moved to EDAcore so KiCAD can use it.
EagleCAD - CERN is writing import for this into KiCAD but we could move that to EDAcore and add export which would help entice more of the open hardware community to migrate
Protel - The published their file format spec but no one has written a library to interpret it.
Altium - Unlike the others they keep their format closed so we are all waiting on this I guess. http://hackaday.com/2014/10/15/reverse-engineering-altium-files/

PS: The QUCS talk was really good. Even if you don't care about gEDA or KiCAD you might want to watch it.
PPS: In case you think I am just waiting for others to do the work keep in mind I have been quietly working on something for a little while. I will release it when I feel ready. It should ultimately change openocd, gEDA and KiCAD but in a more minor way.
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #10 on: June 22, 2015, 01:24:39 am »
When I started with gEDA it was 2004. KiCAD in those days was terrible in comparison and it was almost all in French. Even the names they used in the code and the comments. Apparently the KiCAD people spent a lot of time migrating to English. If you watch the FOSDEM video the developer jokes about this.
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #11 on: June 22, 2015, 01:27:00 am »
One thing that keeps getting forgotten in the EDAcore discussion is the QUCS people. QUCS is getting damn impressive and not talking to those guys is a glaring and bizarre oversight to say the least.
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #12 on: June 22, 2015, 01:32:08 am »
Netlist portability is something that is likely to happen. KiCAD uses simulators that were traditionally associated with gEDA.
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #13 on: June 22, 2015, 01:41:14 am »
@Mark03 No arbitrary vias?! To be fair making a hole in gEDA/PCB means drawing a via and then removing the copper after.

There are a lot of plugins like this that are really cool never get rolled into the mainline.
http://www.sandpiper-inc.com/stipple/html/
http://www.delorie.com/pcb/teardrops/
http://www.delorie.com/electronics/sdram/
 

Offline mark03

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 708
  • Country: us
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #14 on: June 22, 2015, 04:46:39 pm »
@Mark03 No arbitrary vias?! To be fair making a hole in gEDA/PCB means drawing a via and then removing the copper after.

Yeah but most boards only have a handful of holes.  Better for them to be the exception  :)
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #15 on: June 24, 2015, 01:47:56 pm »
I interviewed gEDA's main (only?) PCB module developer, DJ Delorie:
@Dave

I just noticed this above the video. While I have never contributed to PCB and DJ has in major ways he is not the only developer. Here is a list of them
http://git.geda-project.org/geda-gaf/tree/AUTHORS

and you can see who is currently active by looking at the commits here.
http://git.geda-project.org/pcb/

There was a time when DJ became known as the PCB guy and people were approaching him to add x feature they wanted. I don't want to speak for him but I believe it got frustrating.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2015, 01:51:51 pm by ScribblesOnNapkins »
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #16 on: June 24, 2015, 01:54:24 pm »
I use gEDA for work. You can see some of what I do here. Sadly the two biggest projects are not stuff I can post. :(

http://forge.abcd.harvard.edu/gf/project/epl_engineering/wiki/
 

Offline Godzil

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 458
  • Country: fr
    • My own blog
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #17 on: August 19, 2015, 10:44:38 am »
*for me* the only tool where gEDA is better than KiCad is the Gerber viewer, kicad's one is really basic and nearly useless, gEDA one which is not perfect, provide at least some useful tool, allow layers to be reordered, etc...

http://gerbv.geda-project.org/

gerbv:

vs

Kicad's:
(yes I know it's an old version in this picture, but it haven't changed a lot with the latest changes)

Kicad is at least missing the possibility to change the layer order, do some measurement (if there an option it's absolutely not obvious)
The "rendering" options that gerbv have are really useful (especially the semi transparent one)

Also with kicad you lost the name of the file you used for each layer, some time it's obvious what is what, but sometime it take too much time to understand which layer is what.
When you make hardware without taking into account the needs of the eventual software developers, you end up with bloated hardware full of pointless excess. From the outset one must consider design from both a hardware and software perspective.
-- Yokoi Gunpei
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #18 on: August 23, 2015, 04:51:30 pm »
IMHO almost everything is better than Geda + PCB (yes I have used it for a project). Regarding viewing gerbers: you can download Viewmate from Pentalogix for free. Works like a charm. I never use a Gerber viewer which is built into a CAD package.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2015, 04:53:19 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline timofonicTopic starter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 904
  • Country: es
  • Eternal Wannabe Geek
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #19 on: August 23, 2015, 10:25:51 pm »
IMHO almost everything is better than Geda + PCB (yes I have used it for a project). Regarding viewing gerbers: you can download Viewmate from Pentalogix for free. Works like a charm. I never use a Gerber viewer which is built into a CAD package.

What are the differences between them? Why is gEDA's gerbv better than KiCad's GerbView?


But they aren't Open Source, and that matters to some ideologists like me ;)

These days there are electronics geeks using Linux since many years, I'm one of them. And OSHW is making electronics on Linux a lot more popular too.

The reliability of using Wine is limited on applications and is only usable in some of them, specially if developers fix their applications to have good compatibility ( such as LTSpice). And this isn't a possibility if you use "exotic" platforms such as ARM (there are going to be many very powerful ones in the main future), MIPS and even PowerPC (not so used in desktop platforms other than very alternative ones such as MorphOS and AmigaOS 4).

I try to use FOSS all time, because propietary software is a trap in too many ways. They do all kinds of nasty tricks for vendor lock-in, like using propietary formats or making you too used to their very different interface to attach to their software.

Of course, sometimes you have to deal with it and be a "sinner", unless you are a defiant developer with a few of free time to develop your own it improve an existing FOSS solution. Unfortunately that isn't so common, it's extremely difficult to be an EE or advanced electronics hobbyist and a good software developer and even be so activist to have that attitude.

I really hope FOSS electronics software becomes more popular and a lot better then these days. I really happen this is possible . I think to make this happen, it requires lots of efforts in good quality organized collaborative development and making strong organizations to have full time paid developers in these projects.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2015, 10:28:34 pm by Circuiteromalaguito »
 

Offline HackedFridgeMagnet

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2028
  • Country: au
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #20 on: August 24, 2015, 12:14:51 am »
I never use a Gerber viewer which is built into a CAD package.
That sounds like a wise choice.
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #21 on: August 24, 2015, 12:58:40 am »
The reliability of using Wine is limited on applications and is only usable in some of them,
Wine just doesn't work so just forget about it. Get Virtualbox (free) and run Windows in a Virtual machine for the few pieces of software for which no Linux alternative exists or you just like to use. Problem solved. Comparing a CAD package based on the third party software they include is not very useful IMHO. Actually it is better to use a different piece of software so you make sure there aren't any issues with the Gerber file the author of the software is unaware of.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Bassman59

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2501
  • Country: us
  • Yes, I do this for a living
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #22 on: August 24, 2015, 05:50:44 pm »
I never use a Gerber viewer which is built into a CAD package.
That sounds like a wise choice.
Indeed. Not to cast aspersions on the Kicad guys, but I like the idea of not validating incorrect assumptions with incorrect assumptions!

The MCN Gerber viewer is decent and cross-platform.
 

Offline c4757p

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7799
  • Country: us
  • adieu
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #23 on: August 24, 2015, 05:56:05 pm »
Indeed. Not to cast aspersions on the Kicad guys, but I like the idea of not validating incorrect assumptions with incorrect assumptions!

If any KiCad guys take offense to that, they are twits! >:D

Always, always always always, validate your Gerbers with another package. The devs who wrote the export code in the layout software should not be the same ones who wrote the import code in the Gerber viewer. They'll make the same exact dumb mistakes.
No longer active here - try the IRC channel if you just can't be without me :)
 

Offline ScribblesOnNapkins

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 111
Re: gEDA vs KiCad: Differences, advantages and disadvantages?
« Reply #24 on: August 25, 2015, 03:14:03 am »
Quote
If any KiCad guys take offense to that, they are twits!

Come one guys. I am solidly in the gEDA camp but I have to admit they deserve *respect*. gEDA and KiCAD are two different philosophies about how to solve this problem. gEDA uses the unix mentality of multiple single function tools the users decides to combined for different work flows. KiCAD is more monolithic for people who want everything in one integrated tool.

Yes you should validate your gerbers. That is why gEDA users call the companion program gerbv after making gerbers in PCB.

To the person who asked "What are the differences between them? Why is gEDA's gerbv better than KiCad's GerbView?" <- it isn't they I am pretty sure KiCad just wraps there stuff around gerbv.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf