--- In [email protected], "AK" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all, > > To me, the result of the poll is outstanding! > Why? > Because if I can do something to get real thanks from just ONE > person, I believe it is worth for me to do it :) > So when 65 persons who are likely busy, gave their time and attention > to reply this poll by 'yes' or 'not sure', it surely means that KiCAD > was worth to be born and... be raised and grow up among us till now.
Thank you for your work. I did not realize that our vote would be made public. Since it has, and I was one of the few "maybe" votes, I feel I should provide just a little bit of feedback to explain it. There are a few caveats and downsides to KiCad, at least with eeSchema where I have literally spent man-weeks in the past several months. I would say that my biggest reservations are not with the GUI environment but in the parts library, as has been discussed in some detail on this forum. Ultimately, one needs to specify the actual components in a design, not just the interconnects. Folks that have worked on production boards know this, but one can easily spend as much or more time working on the BOM as they do the schematic. If you use KiCad to give the basic design and build the BOM separately, you may not care about the parts libraries. Speccing parts is then an exercise in Excel, OpenOffice Calc or other such program. If you want to specify real world parts in the schematic and generate a BOM from the schematics, then the current parts libraries really do not fulfill that role. For our commercial project, we have spent a great deal of time working with our own libraries. I believe we could have purchased commercial software for the amount of engineering time spent working on the libraries. This is not necessarily the responsibility of the KiCad developers, however. In reality, it is probably the KiCad community itself that can step up to the challenge, while the KiCad development team can focus on the program itself. I personally hope to help, though I must admit it is a task that is competing with a lot of other priorities at the moment. (I have 3 kids, one on the way and have other community responsibilities.) Regards to All, a+
