Kicad - GUI is Horrific!

[MarkR42]

No, the Kicad gui is horrific.

But it got a lot better between 5.0 and nightly (which I usually run).

It *is* inconsistent. It is awkward. There are weird keyboard shortcuts that you realistically need to learn.

BUT as I understand it, other EDA packages are just as bad. And Kicad has a lot of momentum.

And *holy f* have you seen the latest pcb routing trace drag/ part drag/ stuff? It is sooo good. (OK, so I guess Altium probably did that for a long time)

[bd139]

All CAD software is shit. But it’s all muscle memory. People need to quit whining and use it.

[james_s]

About 10 years ago when I first started designing PCBs I tried every EDA I could get my hands on, everything from free to stuff that would cost $10k+ to buy. I did at least a board or two in each one before coming to the conclusion that they are all terrible, they're all buggy with weird UI quirks, it's just a matter of picking one, sticking with it and learning to work around the quirks. I chose KiCAD because it's free, capable of professional grade results and completely without artificial limits. I've been using it for years now and I barely notice the quirks anymore.

[poeschlr]

GUI design is highly subjective. What is intuitive to one is alien to another (mostly dependent on what tools a given user had contact with in the past). This is already one of the bigger issues faced by KiCad (a eagle user expects something different to an altium user or somebody who is a novice to electronic design software, and somebody who grew up with smartphones has a different idea about user interfaces than somebody who started back when all we had was a command line.)

Software design (like all things in life) is full of tradeoffs. In the case of powerful tools you have the obvious tradeoff between feature richness and ease of entry (the more features you provide the more the user needs to learn). Unlike a game you can not really make a tutorial level so you either need to make a small gui exposing only basic tools and hide the more powerful stuff (will make advance users unhappy) or show all tools and have a beginner be overwhelmed.

In the end powerful tools will always need to rely on good documentation. This is maybe one of the bigger faults of KiCad as the official documentation is quite lacking. But as with all things open source others step in. There are the kicad user forum FAQ, youtube tutorials and even books like "KiCad like a pro". And there now even is a professional subscription based support option for companies (The company got started by seth, and he now also employs wayne after his previous employment fell through)

[Wilksey]

Stick with it, you get used to how a program works, it's not "horrific", I've used much worse, it has it's bugs but then so do very expensive alternatives, and they get fixed just as often as KiCAD bugs it seems.

You can alter the hotkeys in KiCAD, it has a lot of useful features you wouldn't even find in some paid programs, and it's free, GUI was essentially designed to run on Linux originally and Windows was just a bonus, and it is much better than it used to be, but even at version 4 it had a usable GUI, and it's one of the best design tools if not the best for the price.

If you want to use a more polished GUI, then go and pay the money for it.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Most EDA tools have baggage dating back to their DOS and/or Unix workstation origins - once they have a user base, they have to balance the pain for new users vs. upsetting existing ones by changing.
 
The reason I jumped at PCAD ( then ACCEL PCB) back in the late 90s (I think)  was that it had been designed from the ground up to use windows GUI conventions, which made it very easy to get into using.
 

[Davor]

I am still using ACCEL PCB from 1999, but planning to switch to Kicad around 2030 when GUI gets better.

[MadScientist]

Having used almost all the major packages , I still find diptrace to have the most consistent windows styled GUI, and it’s a package I can quickly get back to speed on , if I’m away from pcb design for a while. The downside is the appallingly slow update process

[JohnG]

It doesn't seem any worse to me than Eagle or Altium, frankly. I have used both of these, but now use Altium exclusively since my employer pays for it and it does every single thing we need it to do, and as our company grows, we have found it to be fairly robust in terms of not messing up designs.

Altium schematic entry has some quirks that I find cumbersome and annoying. If they get rid of them, then someone else will complain... And, it still crashes, or gets into a state where I need to quit and restart. One could say that this is also horrific.

John

[kripton2035]

Altium schematic entry has some quirks that I find cumbersome and annoying. If they get rid of them, then someone else will complain... And, it still crashes, or gets into a state where I need to quit and restart. One could say that this is also horrific.

especially considering the price you (your employer) paid for it...

[Wilksey]

Long time user of Altium, currently running 19, will update to 20 when the current project is done, not had any crashes, the only schematic annoyance I have found is dragging symbols around sometimes the connections join to other connections, apparently this is a "feature" but it's damned inconvenient!

[Doctorandus_P]

The reason I jumped at PCAD ( then ACCEL PCB) back in the late 90s (I think)  was that it had been designed from the ground up to use windows GUI conventions, which made it very easy to get into using.

Also around that time I bought EdLin, which was also build from the ground up for Windows.
It was an extremely piece of garbage, and after I found out that it did not delete connections form the netlist when you remove a wire from the schematic it was a one way ticket to the garbage bin.

I this day and age we should not have to sit on the bog with a tablet reading software's instruction manuals.

Could not agree more. Your absolutely right.
How about this:
You pay me the regular Altium price and I'll design a PCB for you in KiCad. Only additional thing you have to do is to relax, sit in the shade (or sun if you like that better) relax and have some sips from your favorite beverage.

A few years ago I was in need for a new Schematics / PCB program and I tried at least 6 different packages. KiCad was the only one in which I could get a (simple) design from schematic to PCB in a single evening. Probably because it had the "getting started with KiCad" guide, which was up to date back then. Other programs I thoroughly disliked even after only working half an hour with them. They just collided with my personality I guess.

After I got started with KiCad I begun to like it a lot. The thing is that no program of this complexity is perfect. KiCad also has it's limitations but I like the way it works. After a while you grow into the PCB program you're used to. You know all the workarounds for the limitations of the program, and you also know how to take advantage of it's hidden features that help to get things done quickly. If you then switch to another PCB program, you get annoyed by all it's quirks and know none of the handy shortcuts to get things done.
This is probably the reason why lots of people recommend the the program they are used to and dislike the others, even if they've "tried" them.

Reading reviews about a PCB program is also mostly useless. You can of course make a preliminary choice and scrap some programs that do not have features that are very important to you but after that the review is not of much use anymore.

A mix of limitations and capabilities of each program also has a certain "personality". It can either fit with your own personality or go against it.
A very important factor for me is that KiCad is an Open Source program.
Not because it's "Free" to use (as in free Beer), but because of the freedom you have with it.
There are no artifical limitations such as in lots of "commercial" programs.
There is no limited time to try it. I've tried some "try it for a month" programs, and then got distracted and was not able to get a decent opinion of that program before the month was over.
There are no yearly subscriptions. I only make a few PCBs occasionally. Any subscription based program is just out of the question.
Again, If I want to modify my KiCad boards in 5 or 10 years time there is no hassle over fees. I just install it.

And in 10 years time I will have another computer, maybe even switched twice.
Re-installing a program usually is just [Ctrl + Shift +T] and some 30 characters on my keyboard.
Re-installing 30 programs after I've got a new computer is half an hour of cut and paste form a text file to a terminal window.
(I prefer not to have complete scripts, because those get outdated too, and it's the right time to ditch old programs by simply not installing them.)

[Dubbie]

People saying that pcb software is complex therefore we have to put up with bad UIs is utter nonsense. In the industry I work in, the software used daily is extremely complex, with literally tens of thousands of tools and commands. But the UI and user workflow in the vast majority of those applications is mostly straightforward with a few rare niggles. Where the software does not have a good user interface, complaints fly thick and fast, and people switch to other tools.

I think it is because EEs have low standards and don’t demand excellence from their user experiences.

[james_s]

Well let us know when you've finished creating a professional grade EDA with a wonderful polished user interface. Better yet one that is free, and no less powerful/capable than KiCAD.

Perhaps it's because these are low volume niche applications, they are not selling millions and millions of copies. Given limited dev resources I'd much rather have them fixing bugs and adding useful features instead of wasting time polishing the UI. No matter how good you make the UI, people are still going to complain about it, EDAs are complex by nature.

[luzotug]

Well let us know when you've finished creating a professional grade EDA with a wonderful polished user interface. Better yet one that is free, and no less powerful/capable than KiCAD.

Perhaps it's because these are low volume niche applications, they are not selling millions and millions of copies. Given limited dev resources I'd much rather have them fixing bugs and adding useful features instead of wasting time polishing the UI. No matter how good you make the UI, people are still going to complain about it, EDAs are complex by nature.

EDA are complex but it doesn't stop people creating their own, I'm keeping an eye on Horizon EDA : https://horizon-eda.org/
It's basically a KiCad level player (it has a lot in common) with a GUI done differently and it has reached the release production level (currently version 1.1.0).

[ebastler]

This thread feels a lot like the "Linux on the desktop is the bee's knees" vs. "Linux on the desktop sucks" threads. I expect to get similar value out of it.

[poeschlr]

I kind of suspect that people who say KiCad is horrible are users who need it for something it is not yet ready for and the people who say it is awesome are the ones who have most of their usecases fulfilled (and see the few missing things only as a minor inconvenience). I think we really need to finally realize that there can be different requirements and that KiCad just is not the right tool for everyone. (I started to be much more open about that on the user forum and users really respond well to it. They might then even be prepared to accept workarounds if there is first an acknowledgement that yes something is still missing)

[voltsandjolts]

[Bassman59]

People saying that pcb software is complex therefore we have to put up with bad UIs is utter nonsense. In the industry I work in, the software used daily is extremely complex, with literally tens of thousands of tools and commands. But the UI and user workflow in the vast majority of those applications is mostly straightforward with a few rare niggles. Where the software does not have a good user interface, complaints fly thick and fast, and people switch to other tools.

I think it is because EEs have low standards and don’t demand excellence from their user experiences.

I don't agree with anything you wrote, especially the last sentence. The fact that people complain here about user interfaces disproves your assertion! I mean, mention "LTSpice" and the first thing anyone will say is "the user interface is fucking ridiculous" but everyone uses it and deals with the stupid interface. (Aside: surely Mike Engelhardt knows that users hate this interface, but now consider: that little piece of software has been in the field for what, 20 years now, and if the interface was changed to be less stupid, users would absolutely complain!)

That said:

Beyond obvious things like cut/copy/paste and mouse-wheel scrolling/zooming, users have different ideas about how an interface should be implemented. Take something simple, like placing a wire on a schematic. Do you want to select a menu item "Place Wire ..." or click a toolbar icon or just press the W key? If you prefer the first two options, you necessarily have to move your mouse to the starting point and then click. If you prefer the latter, you can place your cursor at the starting point and press W and that starts the wire, no extra click involved. Which is better? I don't know!

Of course there are thing that should be common between schematic and layout. Things like zoom in/out, place wire/trace, move part, move block, drag, all that, yes, the key-commands to do them should be the same, and the Kicad developers know that and have worked to make them coherent.

Anyways, I haven't even mentioned libraries, and EVERYBODY has an opinion on how libraries should be organized and implemented!

[kripton2035]

no simple copy-paste from one drawing to another is for me a really design flow in the user interface.
but I like kicad because it is still powerful, free and works on a mac, almost the only one for a ecad app.
once you learn the few keyboard shortcuts, it is still annoying but it works and let me build a pcb quite fast.
and for the price you can't complain. if it is not as you like, then participate to the coding and make it change, make a new branch and develop your own.
for the "place wire" thing, a good app would offer both ways to start a wire.
don't forget the (good) user interface in an app represents 50 to 80% of the whole coding work.

[ebastler]

it is still annoying but it works

Hey, I thought that was EAGLE's marketing slogan!   

[pointhi]

(Attachment Link)

No kidding, I wouldn't be suprised when KiCad can do something similar like that in 5 years . Why do I know? I started with something like that, but it is currently on hold because KiCad misses schematic scripting and flexible annotation support, which I deem as hard requirement for a sensible implementation.

https://gitlab.com/pointhi/kicad-schematic-builder

The original idea comes from https://www.jitx.com but I limit myself to schematics, because those are computationally feasable.

[Doctorandus_P]

Do you want to select a menu item "Place Wire ..." or click a toolbar icon or just press the W key? If you prefer the first two options, you necessarily have to move your mouse to the starting point and then click. If you prefer the latter, you can place your cursor at the starting point and press W and that starts the wire, no extra click involved.

KiCad can do both

Which is better? I don't know!

I do know!
The answer is: There is no "better". Stuff like this is the area of personal preferences of users. So the "better" way is to have a program that can do both equally well and let the user decide.

Fun Fact:
I make so much use of the keyboard and KiCad's shortcuts, that if I have a day that I do a lot of schematic entry I automatically start pressing "hjkl" for cursor movement somewhere halfway the day. Even though I'm not a Vim Fanboy. But still, sometimes I think about re-assigning those shortcut keys...

[Doctorandus_P]

@pointhi

That gitlab / KiCad-project-builder seems to use S-expressions to build a schematic. Correct?

Are you aware of skidl?
Skidl is a python library to aid in generating a netlist for KiCad without a schematic. It is especially useful for schematics that have a lot of repetition.
I see it as a sort of VHDL for schematic entry.

The example below is from "skidl_clock" and uses a few nested loops to generate a netlist.

Code: [Select]

from skidl import *

anodes = Bus('a', 6)    # 6-bit anode bus, but only use a[1]..a[5].
cathodes = Bus('k', 16) # 16-bit cathode bus, but only use k[1]..k[15].

# Create an LED template that will be copied for each LED needed.
led = Part('device', 'D', footprint='Diodes_SMD:D_0603', dest=TEMPLATE)

# Connect the 60 second LEDs to the anodes and cathodes.
for a in anodes[1:4]:             # Connect LEDs between anodes 1, 2, 3, 4.
    for k in cathodes[1:15]:      # and cathodes 1, 2, 3, ... , 15.
        led(1)['A', 'K'] += a, k  # Copy LED template and connect anode and cathode.

# Now connect the 12 hour LEDs, all of which are attached to anode a[5].
# The nested for loops select the cathodes in the correct order.
for i in range(2,6):
    for k in cathodes[i:i+10:5]: # Connect k[2,7,12], k[3,8,13], k[4,9,14] and k[5,10,15].
        led(1)['A', 'K'] += anodes[5], k  # Copy LED and connect anode and cathode.

ERC()               # Look for rule violations.
generate_netlist()  # Generate netlist file.

[MadScientist]

I switched from paid DipTrace a year ago to Kicad 5 and now V6. I think it’s a fantastic piece of software. Are there things I’d like, sure, but the current release is productive , easy to use ( as compared to other pcb cad ) and is very capable.

What’s not to like