Chris, The having to first route tracks to pins which really should be tied to a coppor area will cost you countless hours for the type of boards you are talking about.
Not being able to edit the zones and move their boundaries without re-editing the entire perimeter is also another deal breaker. These are crippling deficiencies of Kicad. Knock out blow delivered. Check back in six months though, these issues might be resolved. However, it is not clear to me who is going to fix these issues at this point. I just contributed my latest $12,000 of time to this project and I think it might now be way past time to spend money like that on a commercial product. Dick Hollenbeck SoftPLC Corporation http://softplc.com > Hi Chris, > > I'm not a Mac but I've seen a couple of messages about compiling Kicad on > Mac lately, probably on the developer mailing list. You should have a look > at the archives. From what I remember, there have been some work done to > improve compiling on Mac OS but there are some issues with wxwidgets 2.8. > You may have to use 2.6. > > David > > On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:47:58 +0100, chris_inacio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > I'm looking for some advice on choosing a PCB tool. I am new to PCB > > design. I've done > > FPGA RTL and embedded RTOS, and such professionally, but I've never done > > my own PCB's. > > I like what I can see with Kicad, but I will be using Mac OS X as my > > operating system. I've > > gotten it to compile on Mac OS X, but it is clumsy at this point. > > (That's probably being a > > little generous too.) There doesn't seem to be a lot of Mac OS X > > support. It looks like the > > last post about a Mac OS X port was in August. My first question, is > > there any actual > > interest in a Mac OS X port? I can probably help make it better; but I > > don't want to spend > > all my "free" time improving the tools, and not doing any PCB design. > > > > Second, there are a handful of alternatives for Mac OS. Osmond PCB, > > EAGLE, McCAD, > > PCBWarrior, Elektro CAD. Does anyone have any opinions of these > > alternatives? I'm not > > trying to troll for trouble here -- just some honest feedback. For just > > about every tool I've > > ever used for this type of stuff (and embedded debug, etc.) investing > > time into learning > > the tool is a lot of investment, I don't want to waste my effort if I > > can avoid it. I don't > > mind pitching in some to a Kicad to Mac OS X port, but like I said, I > > also want to get other > > stuff done. > > > > And if it matters, I'm looking at designing some moderately complex > > boards. Some mixed > > signal, ARM + FPGA + ethernet + wifi. ARM + FPGA + GPS module + radio > > modem. So I'm > > sure I will be digging into Johnson's Black Magic to help me along the > > way. I doubt there > > is any kind of open source equivalent to Hyperlinx or Maxwell? Would > > this type of board > > design impact my tool choice? (And yes, I do have some very experienced > > board design > > friends to help me out, but I would like to do it mostly on my own.) > > > > Thanks, > > Chris Inacio > > > > > > > > > > > > Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your > > question. > > Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator > > of Kicad. > > Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute > > your symbols/modules to the kicad library. > > For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the > > kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-devel > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > >
