So, What's the future standard CAD tool for open source H/W

[poorchava]

I would choose Diptrace. It has less features than Altium, to but is much much better than Eagle, KiCad and other stuff. The most pimped out (unlimited in every respect) version is like 700$ should you need it and this is a one time payment rather than a yearly subscription. They support at least Windows and Linux natively, to not sure about Apple. DipTrace is also being developed very actively and devs are actually responsive to user requests.

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[Tabs]

I would choose Diptrace. It has less features than Altium, to but is much much better than Eagle, KiCad and other stuff. The most pimped out (unlimited in every respect) version is like 700$ should you need it and this is a one time payment rather than a yearly subscription. They support at least Windows and Linux natively, to not sure about Apple. DipTrace is also being developed very actively and devs are actually responsive to user requests.

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Yeah, I had my mind stuck in Free (as in cost), but your right. DipTrace is a good choice.
It would be good if someone could do a DipTrace Vs CM or CS.
Altium used to have a really good bang per buck value but its dropped due to the recent price hike.
Would be interesting to know what $895 (DipTrace) gets you compared to $3000 (CS £ -> $)

[rolycat]

Shouldn't "the future standard CAD tool for open source H/W" be widely available to everyone? I don't see a tool costing over $500 ever being a viable candidate.

That's why Eagle is the current king. The limits may be silly but they are loose enough for most people, it's cross platform and most importantly it really is free (no stupid cloud, registration, DRM etc.)

It may not be the best by a long shot, but it's the best of a bad bunch. The sad thing is that despite that, no-one else seems to be able to beat it.

With a new Kicad stable release imminent, someone else may well be able to beat it.

Kicad may still be quirky, but it's getting very capable.

[Wilksey]

Firstly,

I hope to see more videos regarding CM from Dave / Dave 2.0, especially with the build of the new design.

KiCAD is fiddly to set up the build environment, but once you have it set up, you can make it work, my windows dev machine has a make batch script from the winbuilder package that works just fine, I have to update the version but have scripted that also.
I have been using KiCAD more and more recently and found it very capable.

I am a long time user of Eagle, and use AD for work purposes, so also a long time user of AD!

Eagle works, it is more comparable to Circuit Studio in terms of offline working rather than Circuit Maker in my opinion, but there is no doubt that CM / CS feature set is more complete and favourable than that of Eagle, DipTrace and KiCAD.

As I have said before, even if they pull the plug on Eagle today, it will still be used in 20 years' time, if they pull the plug on CM, then you will be recreating your designs in <insert favourite package here> without even being able to download a free viewing tool to reference from, far too risky in my opinion.

Plus, if I wanted to create a few "non open source" projects, I would be able to with CS / Eagle / DT/ etc but only have a few "sandboxed" projects with CM so I would only be able to have one private and one work in progress project at any one time, hmm.

DipTrace isn't better than Eagle or KiCAD, Eagle isn't better than CM or KiCAD either, they are just different, personal preference!

KiCAD so far has not broken anything with their daily builds, which is a good thing, it is still very much in development, and not really comparable to the likes of the commercial products (CM, Eagle, DT etc), it's a very advanced and decent product for what it costs, but not for your average Joe Public, but any decent engineer should be able to use it.

There are some things which we all think differently about for various reasons, at the end of the day the choice is yours what you use, I always recommend downloading all of them and asking yourself what would happen if the company were to either go bust, or pull the plug, would you be able to use it still, or would you feel comfortable potentially having to redo all of your work in another package and rerun the learning curve.  If you are happy with the later and CM works for you then use that, if you want a more risk free solution use AD or CS, or another package with offline support.

Personally, I would chose CS over CM purely for my own paranoia reasons, but wonder if its worth spending the few extra £'s on the full AD over CS.  It will be interesting to see what AD16 has to offer, I prefer the ribbon over the old UI aesthetically it looks better in my opinion.

[EEVblog]

Shouldn't "the future standard CAD tool for open source H/W" be widely available to everyone? I don't see a tool costing over $500 ever being a viable candidate.

Which is why I think Eagle is ultimately a lame duck. Fine and dandy for anyone doing small PCB's, but then it costs over $1000 to do a simple 161mm long single sided PCB. One could argue that Altium may indeed be a less crazy option.

[Tabs]

Shouldn't "the future standard CAD tool for open source H/W" be widely available to everyone? I don't see a tool costing over $500 ever being a viable candidate.

That's why Eagle is the current king. The limits may be silly but they are loose enough for most people, it's cross platform and most importantly it really is free (no stupid cloud, registration, DRM etc.)

It may not be the best by a long shot, but it's the best of a bad bunch. The sad thing is that despite that, no-one else seems to be able to beat it.

One of the main reasons eagle is king is because they were among the first capable free cad tools for pcb design. Also, there's kind of a catch 22 here.
Eagle places limits on the size and complexity of any design when using the free version. Open source makers were then constrained to a maximum set by those limits.
Its almost as if the makers had gotten used to that level of complexity and stopped pushing the limits.

They then turn round and say eagle does everything I need. Why do I want CM/CS/AD?
The time it takes to learn a new tool (especially one as complex as AD) (and the cost) then become a turn off when you think you don't need its functionality.
"Ask not what the tool can do for you. Ask what you can do with the tool"

Like Dave said earlier, the cost to develop multi gigahertz stuff today has dropped massively, but you don't see many open source projects pushing that far.
There's the iMX6 Rex board that Robert Feranic did, but that was in AD.

When more capable tools like CM come around, it will bring up the level of open source h/w and then people will start to look to move to those packages.
(as long as its compatible with their open source licence if they use one - GPL, OSHW, CC-BY etc).

[Tabs]

What you actually need is not a standard CAD tool but a standard file format. Take the file to the tool of your choice and all the objections go away.

[/quote]

There are standard file formats now for everything except schematics.
GERBERS, ODB++
Netlist,
IPC-2581 for PCB layout (can replace GERBERs & ODB) -> Altium 15 will import but not export (obviously dont want you going anywhere).
BOMs

I read something about the a standards body working on standarised file formats for schematics but I cant find anything on the net.

[LukeW]

KiCAD is fiddly to set up the build environment, but once you have it set up, you can make it work, my windows dev machine has a make batch script from the winbuilder package that works just fine, I have to update the version but have scripted that also.

Many users, even highly skilled professional EEs, don't know / want to know / want to stuff around with build environments, batch scripts and packages.
That's probably a significant point in favor of Eagle or Altium.

Ideally it should be quick and easy to download and install without compiling it - ideally on Windows, Linux and OSX. That's what Eagle currently offers, it's pretty painless to install across all three major OS families, and it Just Works on any one of them - which I think is a key factor that makes it attractive.

[c4757p]

I do not understand why so many people insist on building from source, and then complaining that they had to build from source. Download the installer and run it.

[free_electron]

pen and paper ... or pencil and paper.

anyone can read it , irrespective of operating system.  you can work your way up from there 

[Bassman59]

Ideally it should be quick and easy to download and install without compiling it - ideally on Windows, Linux and OSX. That's what Eagle currently offers, it's pretty painless to install across all three major OS families, and it Just Works on any one of them - which I think is a key factor that makes it attractive.

You haven't been paying attention! A stable release is planned for the end of next month. It will include painless binary downloads for the three platforms you mention.

[Isaac000]

All this "discussion" about Eagle vs. KiCAD vs. CM/CS, etc.
Why barely a mention of 2 other alternatives?
DesignSpark and PCBWeb.

Both are free, basically unlimited tools. Your files are stored locally, so you always have access. The application, as far as I know, doesn't need a connection and will keep working even if they close up shop. (Okay, the day DigiKey or Allied close up shop, probably last of your concerns if the app stops working).

PCBWeb appears to handle up to 12 layers (I've only used 2) and some really large board sizes. Is it bug-free? No, but it seems to be actively developed and the developers are responsive to my complaints/suggestions. I've developed 2 DC-DC switchers and other boards with this thing. Gerbers got sent off to the fab and they had no trouble with it. It's super-easy to download, install and learn.

DesignSpark looks like it'll do 14 layers (again, I've only used 2) and also some pretty big board sizes. Again, I've done a couple of easy circuits with it, DC switchers and the like and no problems. A bit of a steeper learning curve than PCBWeb, but by no means hard. It was also easy download and install, no troubles registering. My files are local and it doesn't need a network connection to keep working. I don't see it stopping even if the developers stop.

I had a go at KiCAD and while I'll keep it around, I doubt I will use that over the other 2 options. I also tried CircuitMaker and I don't see why you would go with that, it's slow and sluggish compared to the other 2 and all my stuff is way up in the cloud. You can do ZERO work when you're not online.

If you have Eagle and you're happy with it and it does what you need, why switch? But if you're just starting and looking for a tool, why would you not go for a free option that has no limits?

[Isaac000]

By the way, has anyone tried ECAD Part Wizard? Seems to be from the same guys as DesignSpark.
Downside, you need to have MS Office 2007 and higher to work. I have that at work here and gave it a spin.

If it's not already in the library, submit the request, about 20 minutes later, I have the schematic symbol and footprint all ready. Tried a few more parts and same thing. Why spend my time creating my own footprint??? :-)

It exports to DesignSpark, Altium, OrCAD and others. There's also a button to request export to other formats as well. I can easily re-organize the schematic symbol as I see fit, it imported perfectly into DesignSpark along with other pertinent part information all populated too.

[Wilksey]

DS is Easy PC / Pulsonix essentially, but the file formats are not compatible.

I build KiCAD from source as the binaries are usually out of date by a few days, I am fine with building from source, even when stable comes out  I will run side by side the latest dev release for comparison.

I was going to try and integrate it into Jenkins, but I set a script to build every day and save the old version, just in case.

You do not have to build from source, you can download the binary.

For me, what sets KiCAD ahead of EAGLE (And I use EAGLE a lot!) is the 3d view for the board, I don't care about components, but seeing the silkscreen and solder mask representation, same as on AD, is key for me, and I do use Eagle 3D scripts to export to POV RAY and Sketchup, bit it's a faff!  So +1 for KiCAD there.

[xjordanx]

Actually, those people won't switch for the same reasons most Altium users won't switch away from Altium: they've built whole businesses on EAGLE. Believe me, those conversations have been had....

The answer is almost always: "maybe someday I'll have time to actually look at it". Classic business problem of being too busy to spend the time on learning something new that will ultimately make you a lot less frantically busy. It takes lots of willpower and discipline to consider ECAD change...

[xjordanx]

Really? Define "source" in "open source".

I define it as editable copyable content which can be used to reproduce the original and derived works. It has nothing to do with what tool was used to create it. 

[xjordanx]

CS is currently $495USD. A way better value prop for closed source design. Perpetual license. No data hostage.

Or Upverter which is free as in beer and unlimited projects (including private).

[xjordanx]

Would a user be under the threat of being cut off from their work because they simply expressed an opinion that annoyed someone?

If you personally attacked / insulted another member, posted porn links or images, used bad language (other than with @~# masking characters - that would probably be okay)... the usual offences every forum warns against, then yes you would be moderated (not banned).

Oh, and if you expressed an honest opinion related to problem you encountered with the actual software - that is welcomed, though nobody could promise a development outcome from it in all honesty.