KiCAD will be the main PCB layout software package in future?

[SiliconWizard]

I hadn't even heard of X3 yet!

Now you have.
And the official specs are free to download.

[onsenwombat]

Not too long ago the large scale software development was done pretty much solely (correct me if I talk bs here) on proprietary tools, the version control systems to boot.

What is your definition of "not too long ago"? The GNU C compiler came out in 1987, the Revision Control System in 1982. Both were serious tools, and were seen and used as such.

Well yes, but was gcc the workhorse of commercial SW development since 1987? There's been such beasts however such as Borland/Watcom stuff, MSVC, wasn't TI's CCS also for quite some time paid stuff if you didn't want a severely stripped down version, and whatnots. Heck, some companies even used proprietary code editors, Yea, editors, not any compilers, debuggers or somewhat thoroughbred IDEs. And before the git marched victorious, there was stuff like PVCS, which I reckon wasn't free either.

[nigelwright7557]

Software companies that are having problems with real innovation and providing value to customers seem to go deep into marketing and recurring revenue models. They may have reached market share saturation, have too much overhead, have too much investor ROI demands, or are just lazy. KiCAD doesn't have these issues. IMO, they will be around for a long time while other PCB companies rip themselves apart in an effort to achieve growth. Once you are bitten by SaaS you are unlikely to give it another try at any price. Again advantage KiCAD for the long view.

The pcbcad market has been saturated for a long time.
I suspect what will happen will be Kicad forcing competitors out of business.
Its difficult to compete with a competitor who gives the product away.

Of course you can make your software better than Kicad but there comes a point where there is nothing left to add and Kicad catches up.

[Faringdon]

The pcbcad market has been saturated for a long time.
I suspect what will happen will be Kicad forcing competitors out of business.
Its difficult to compete with a competitor who gives the product away.

Of course you can make your software better than Kicad but there comes a point where there is nothing left to add and Kicad catches up.

..Thanks, this is precisely the reason i am not buying Altium...even though the world and his wife seems to be using it now.......because i think KICAD will knock it out... eventually.

[voltsandjolts]

Note that Gerber X3 now includes assembly data. It's going to take a while before it's widely accepted though, but since KiCad supports X2, it'll probably support X3 in the future.
I don't know if it's on their to-do list yet or not.

KiCAD actually had some involvement in the early stages of X3...

https://www.ucamco.com/en/gerber/gerber-x3

[Faringdon]

KICAD  can allow you to name nets on the schem, and then call in a DRC which can allow you to have different clearances for the different net to nets. Eagle cant do this.
Its these kind of things that KICAD does just as well as Altium.
Though KICAD doesnt have a "pusher", but Altium does

[langwadt]

KICAD  can allow you to name nets on the schem, and then call in a DRC which can allow you to have different clearances for the different net to nets. Eagle cant do this.
Its these kind of things that KICAD does just as well as Altium.
Though KICAD doesnt have a "pusher", but Altium does

pusher?

[Karel]

Cadsoft Eagle used a stable and human readable xml format to store schematics and layouts.
KiCad hasn't. It's not even stable (the format).

[nctnico]

Cadsoft Eagle used a stable and human readable xml format to store schematics and layouts.
KiCad hasn't. It's not even stable (the format).

And why is that a problem? It is quite rare that software has a fully backward compatible file format across versions because new features likely require to store new elements that didn't exist in the old version. How is an older version going to deal with that? Delete all data that is used by new features?

[MarkL]

KICAD  can allow you to name nets on the schem, and then call in a DRC which can allow you to have different clearances for the different net to nets. Eagle cant do this.
Its these kind of things that KICAD does just as well as Altium.
Though KICAD doesnt have a "pusher", but Altium does

Actually, Eagle can do both named net classes and different clearances between classes.  The nets are assigned to classes in the schematic editor and the DRC is run from the layout editor.

But Eagle is dead, and has been, and I'm not advocating for it.

[SiliconWizard]

Cadsoft Eagle used a stable and human readable xml format to store schematics and layouts.
KiCad hasn't. It's not even stable (the format).

Define exactly what you mean by "stable", Eagle also introduced new features over the years that obviously made some newer files not fully usable with earlier versions of Eagle.
Now obviously, since Eagle is basically dead and hasn't evolved in years, you can consider the current format fully stable. Sure.

As to the format, KiCad chose S-Expressions rather than XML. Whether you find that less readable is debatable. I'm not a huge fan of this lispy syntax, but that's much easier and faster to parse.
When was the last time you read Eagle schematics and layout XML files and could figure out more things than you would reading a S-Expr KiCad file?

Now having written a library to read Eagle XML files, I can agree that the format (beyond being XML, which was all the rage at the time, a lot less so these days) was well thought-out.

[Karel]

To me it matters when I do a "git diff" after having done some modifications.
With Eagle V7 I understood the output of git diff. With KiCad not so much...

[SiliconWizard]

If that helps: https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/sexpr-schematic/

[DarkMode]

ah Linux, I tried it ONCE 

Not a fan of Windows, but I get licence keys and I pay 1/10th of what the retail box says and I'm fine with that.

Those on Hard Mode love this stuff, me, I'm looking for the Windows installer, sorry Github 

[DarkMode]

This is the exact same debate with other Free software aka Blender