Dang!.......I was hoping to hack the vote so that Wintek's SmARTWORK for DOS would win........
Dave, How about a user vote on what package you should adopt.
My tool choice isn't a democracy, it's dictatorship at the whim of a madman
Dave.
Sure. It seems to me its a matter of just what you are trying to do. As a design engineer in a production environment or even working on side projects, you would tend to be a lot more productive using Altium for the foreseeable future. It may ultimately be the superior package, though from the video you did on the schematic editor of KiCAD, it seemed to hold its own quite well.
On the other hand, as the host of a video blog and website that is largely (mostly?) oriented towards students, amateurs and hobbyists, advanced and otherwise, it would be hard to justify spending a lot of time teaching us about a CAD package that most cannot justify purchasing. Perhaps what the military calls a high-low mix is in order, focusing on Altium and KiCAD and deprecating everything else. Or, you can at least look into going with KiCAD for everything, assuming KiCAD doesn't end up being crap in your eyes.
I don't know, but I can tell you as a viewer, I can see myself spending a lot of hours watching KiCAD-related stuff and cant justify anything like that investment of time in Altium videos. Also, I can see myself buying instructional materials for KiCAD, so it may be a better fit for your business model overall going forward.
QuoteI don't know, but I can tell you as a viewer, I can see myself spending a lot of hours watching KiCAD-related stuff and cant justify anything like that investment of time in Altium videos. Also, I can see myself buying instructional materials for KiCAD, so it may be a better fit for your business model overall going forward.
Any "instructional" type videos I do will not be how to use a particular package, but be as tool-agnostic as possible, and focus on the PCB layout in general.
But there is ultimately only so much you can do there.
BTW, I'm seriously considering making that sort of thing paid content stuff, and not part of the regular blog.
Dave.
Part of me would hate to see that of course (the part of me that would have to pay :-) , but another part knows you have to pay the bills and hopes thatyou can thrive as opposed to survive doing this. I would think going multi-tiered to some extent is inevitable given what you are trying to do here. Perhaps even tri-tiered (Free-Amateur/Hobbiest-Pro). All of that in my mind dovetails in nicely with the whole open source, free base product and value-added pay-for-service model, which has always made a great deal of sense to me.
Will KiCAD even handle panelisation easily? I'm thinking maybe not, and that might be a show-stopper for me personally.
Will KiCAD even handle panelisation easily? I'm thinking maybe not, and that might be a show-stopper for me personally.
software is not a diode you can play 2 hours random with it to judge it. i'm expecting a more professional way of commentary or comparison from someone who basically know all the functions and read the manual.
Will KiCAD even handle panelisation easily? I'm thinking maybe not, and that might be a show-stopper for me personally.Other people have done it. You can open a new PCBnew load your board and position it, load another board with the "File - Append Board" command and position it, etc.
Totally agree with you on this Mech, but at this particular case, I also do love the instant and the Dave's unique non-scripted review, its sort of the other way of looking a product thru Dave's eyes, and for certain situations, I trust his judgement especially on 1st impression, this it self brings value to us as certain audiences which like myself, again, in this situation don't need or want to go thru lengthy review/benchmark comparison among products.
And that's all it is, literally a first impression, without any video editing, thinking, checking, or retakes.
Yep, I'm sure countless people will think it's some sort of "review"
Dave.
havent look at both diptrace and kicad vidz due to our local enigmatic condition, i wish i could, soon. but imho, software is not a diode you can play 2 hours random with it to judge it. i'm expecting a more professional way of commentary or comparison from someone who basically know all the functions and read the manual. you know... different people, different programmers, different users or even different bosses got different paradigm about anything (one eg is pan and zoom issue, my paradigm is mousewheel for zoom in-out, click-drag-release for pan). but you have your way dave as usual, YMMV.
They really made progress with the GUI, but it is still that I somehow think it is done without "love". I really hate how they convolute even simple things like placing some text. I hate how they still stick with that old CAD model "select tool -> apply tool to objects", instead of the now more common "select object(s) -> apply function to object(s)" model.
The current interface is already the improved interface. When I first looked at KiCad it was simply chaos. The GUI apparently done by someone with very little experience in doing graphical user interfaces, and, this is maybe the key, without a knack for it.
They really made progress with the GUI, but it is still that I somehow think it is done without "love". I really hate how they convolute even simple things like placing some text. I hate how they still stick with that old CAD model "select tool -> apply tool to objects", instead of the now more common "select object(s) -> apply function to object(s)" model.