Electronics > DIPtrace
Considering the unthinkable
SilverSolder:
I decided to install KiCad as well, now that I'm looking around.
It seems much heavier than Diptrace. There are some things to like - e.g. allows drawing lines at 45 degree angles in the schematic editor - I did feel Diptrace is a bit regimented by insisting on 90 degrees only. I also like the look & feel of KiCad in general, vaguely reminiscent of other open source tools like Inkscape which I also like.
The biggest surprise in KiCad so far is... No Autorouter?? How do you actually route the tracks? Diptrace made all that stuff easy, I still haven't figured out how to generate a routed PCB in KiCad and I'm all out of aspirin now.
PartialDischarge:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on February 27, 2021, 02:30:16 am ---
The biggest surprise in KiCad so far is... No Autorouter??
--- End quote ---
I agree with blueskull, I would not autoroute nor autoplace any of my boards. The overall mechanics of the equipment requires special placement that only I know, and the nature of the traces (digital, analog, impedance, switching nodes, speed, etc.. ) I know but kicad does not. During routing you actually realise of placement improvements. I actually consider it a fun 3d drawing game
SilverSolder:
I am used to doing the whole thing the hard way, but I liked how the Diptrace autorouter makes a "starting point" that you then tidy up afterwards - many of the autorouter decisions were decent enough, so it did reduce the amount of work overall, to my mind. The autorouter also responds to intelligent component placement and orientation - in fact, you can run the autorouter, look at the mess, and then change placements to reduce "congestion" in a pretty quick iterative process. Striving to make an easy-to-route layout is a good thing to do either way, whether the routing is done by human or "AI"?
The manual routing tool in KiCad is "intelligent" in how it works, almost like a one-track-at-a-time 'guided autorouter' - and I enjoyed using it, it is very cool how it behaves and definitely takes a lot of tedium out of the process - but I was expecting a full-on autorouter a la Diptrace to be in there somewhere as an option.
Now that I know how KiCad works, I'll stop looking for an autorouter and start laying the test board out "semi automatic" style, and see how I get on!
n4nln:
In most cases, there is a *huge* difference between "inexpensive" and "cheap".
-mo
NivagSwerdna:
I use FreeRouting with KiCad and then tidy up manually; works fine for me when I am in a hurry.
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