That has never been, nor shall ever be a problem with "open source". That is the fault of the programmer(s). PERIOD.
true. But the programmers writing closed source are up to the job apparently. they hire the ones that know how to do it.
The entire spirit of open source is that you are not dependant on a third party to change a functionality in the program for you.
not true. i am not a coder. using open source for me does not alter my dependency on a programmer to alter functionality. my guess is 90% of the worlds computer users are not coders , have never written a program , let a lone something like an excel macro. We have NO interest in programming. we want to DO something , with the least amount of effort possible.
You cant code.. too bad.. pay someone to do it.
gladly. Great attitude : "look at me i'm a coder, i understand the source". great, thank you , can we move on now ? i need a pcb at the end of the day. 4 layers , one ground plane , one split power plane and a full bill of material with order codes.
Or start a kickstarter equivalent of software to fund a kicad clean up.... no wait!!! that is what CERN has started out to achieve.
Big round of applause ! And we're off.. eh ... nowhere ...
They quickly found out how much effort it costs, how scarce the programmers with the right know-how are, and how much 'money' the cheapskates are willing to pitch in... zilch , nothing ,zero , nada. They got enough money for what ? paying their programmers for three days ?
so that avenue is closed as well... developing code based on goodwill and charity doesn't work. people need money to live. We're not all skinny, pasty looking, nerds that live in a cellar surviving off volt cola and twinkies. the people of CERN stated that clearly up front : we need funding or it ain't gonna happen.
Try doing that (customizing, I mean) with a feature of altium that you dont like, or hire someone to do it for you.. or better still get Altium to take you seriously and convert your inputs and suggestions into a patch for altium. Lets see how far you get...
All serious cad tools these days have scripting languages. just write a script to do it. no need to delve into tons and tons of code and figure out how those guts work. simply write the missing bit. Or , suggest stuff on the manufacturers user forum. if enough people vote for it it will get implemented. no problem. All serious pcb tool makers listen.
Regarding your gripe with the UI of kicad,
it's not just the UI. it is the lack of basic functionality.
- no planes.
- no split planes.
- no library that contains a link to a pcb footprint
- no storage for BOM information
- make schematic in tool x , apply footprints in tool y , place and route in tool z. it is cumbersome , annoying and a waste of time to do this stuff over and over for every single project. this is a massive waste of time and counterproductive.
If you had started the journey with kicad, would your views be the same?
If i had never used something with more functionality no. if i used even a very old commercial pcb tool, yes.
Heck the first PCB tools were written in fortran on a vax . they were distributed as source for free , and knew how to do planes.
Do not give my hypotheticals
these are not hypotethicals. it is BASE FUNCTIONALITY. not having planes is like having a a simple image drawing tool that does not let you pick a color... come on people, really ?
EVERY pcb tool out there , even the very old ones have these concepts as they are base functions.
if you are going to omit planes. why not omit via's ? you can use pads ! why do you need tracks where you can set the width ? just draw a bunch of parallel lines until you reach the desired width.
here is a couple of non hypotheticals :
why do you need rotation capability ? just draw symbols in 4 directions: that is how smartwork did it. you would type DIP 40 600 E. this meant i need a dip , 40 pins , 600 mils row pitch drawn towards the east. north being top of the screen so east meant the pin one was at cursor and the pins would go to the right and then fold over.). worked perfectly fine in its time.
why do you need traces at all ? just place dots. that is again how smartwork did it. F1 place small dot , F2 remove small dot , F3 place wide dot , F4 remove small dot , F5 change from wide to small and back. you were drawing on a grid that was 50 mil pitch so you could run exactly 1 trace between ic pins. it worked perfectly fine in it's time.
Why do you need a library editor ? just make a textfile using dots and asterisks to draw a symbol. send it through a little script and a symbol comes out. that is how orcad did it ! worked perfectly fine in its time.
why do you need an undo function ? just don't make any mistakes. Calma had that problem they were using a digitizing tablet that understood scribbles. problem was, the contacts would go bad and sometimes the tablet understood : move selection to this point. so it would mess up the entire layout. there was no undo. all you could do was restore your last save point. so the users of that system learned to save, and save often.
why even bother with having netlists ? let's just wire boards without schematics.
While we are on that route ,let's just breadboard the damn thing. Screw those pcb layouts all together , we'll use eyelets and flying wires.
At the way they are progressing Kicad 2020 will be a lump of charcoal and wall in some cave.
But we are now 2014 ... if you come up with software that still has the stuff like the above (and these were real ! NOT hypothetical !) .
Well, prepare to take it in the face... plain and simple.
To make matters worse : instead of adding the base capabilities, what do they spend effort on ? making sure the tool can produce fancy 3d renderings. That is completely useless. 3d is only useful if it can mesh with the mechanical world in terms of STEP import / export and editing while in 3D ( things like body placement, spatial collision detection, and extraction of reference points to create footprints.) 3D renderings are nice but they are functionally useless to the process of designing a PCB. So massive effort is poured in things that bring no value in terms of functionality.
and a learning curve for the user.
missing base functionality is not a learning curve.
i have used many tools over many years. seen them evolve. Kicad still sits in the dark ages.
the ONLY way to pull Kicad out of the dark ages is to put the people writing it in front of a couple (not just one, a couple, as they all have certain strengths and weaknesses) of real layout tools, show them what those can do. but FIRST : sit them next to a person doing PCB layout on a daily basis and analyse the workflow and what is needed.
-edit-
i just found this gem based off a post here on the forum a few minutes ago :
"PCBnew does not allow to place arbitrary vias, that is, I cannot add a via unless I'm drawing a track. This makes it impossible to stitch two ground planes on separate layers together. There are workarounds but they are too cumbersome to use in board designs where a large number of stitches is desired.
Judging from PCBnew's manual this is intended behaviour. It should, however, be considered as a misfeature as this is very basic functionality found in practically every other PCB design program." the workaround is annoying and cumbersome and, if you repour the polygons , the via's isolate themselves so they are useless.
That one really takes the cake. unbelievable. How can you seriously still defend such a tool and the way it is being developed ?
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