> apluscw wrote: > > > > Regarding KiCad, on more than one occasion I have questioned whether > > we made the right decision going with KiCad. We were burdened by the > > fact that we needed 3 seats and none of the "professional" packages > > were economically viable at that time. > > > > While I still have reservations, now that I am making a point to > > create every component in my own library before using things are > > flowing much, much better. There are still some > > bugs/features/strange behaviors that bother us, but it looks like it > > will be OK for schematic capture. > > > > Board layout, however, is a different matter. While we did an > > initial evaluation, it is still unproven in our eyes. If we > > outsourced the layout to someone who could do it in KiCad, then we > > would forever be able to tweak it if need be. > > I second what has been said above, by your description it looks like a > long shot for KiCAD, people who specilise in that kind of work use EDA > packages that can calculate noise/emissions etc. > > Price is not what you should be looking at when choosing EDA tools for > work. That might sound odd coming from someone like me who looked at > KiCAD when faced with a $1500 dollar bill for upgrading my commercial > package to go over 700 pins. But my boards are much simpler, they are 2 > layer and just have lots of interface stuff (connecters, fuseholders, > relays etc that are modified to customer requirements. I miffed a bit at > paying for a package that included spice emulation and upto 6 layers or > whatever that I just did not need. In my line of work a more complicated > package could slow me down rather than speed me up! > > I did however look at other low cost simple packages, to see if they > better suited my needs, and KiCAD does compare favourably. The fact that > it is OSS is a great bonus. >
I understand your analysis and do not necessarily disagree. Penny wise, dollar foolish. I do not like making the following statement in a public arena, but the only way to put things in the proper perspective is to know we were not making payroll. [#-o] Not unheard of for a small high tech company, but none the less very painful. Thankfully, things have improved. [:)] Schematic capture is OK as long as you maintain your own parts library in a manner that suits you. Since we are building up our library, work is starting to progress much more quickly. My biggest complaint in terms of functionality at the moment is that it can be very difficult sometimes to select a component. It keeps popping up the menu you get when you click on a blank space. Sometimes it is almost impossible to select a component or text. Maybe that has been addressed in RC2? We have a meeting today and I plan on discussing our board layout plans. I suspect we will outsource our main board and do the daughterboard ourselves with KiCad. My biggest reservation with outsourcing is the inevitable need to tweak the board later and being forced to rely on an outside party. If someone would do the board layout in a KiCad, FreePCB or another package that we might purchase at a reasonable price, then that would be ideal. We are not done with the design, but just checked and we are currently at about 300 components. Perhaps there are some pro packages that fall below that 700 part count one might recommend? We do have some experience with the freeware version of Eagle. Our tech worked with it some and really liked it. Regarding being OSS, it is a mixed blessing. In an active community you can get great support. On the other hand, developers work on a volunteer basis and may or may not be responsive to feedback. I have not been on the forum long enough to know who the main players are. Have people had good luck making suggestions and getting good responses? Thanks all for the feedback. apluscw
