Hi Mark, Here's my .2 cents. I have never used any other EDA package than Kicad, and I'm just starting out making circuits and boards. That said, I found Kicad fairly intuitive and easy to learn. I did my first schematic of any sort, using an 80 pin TQFP PIC microcontroller, and a bunch of connectors and a few other components. I did the board layout and got prototype boards made by pcbfabexpress.com without any problems. This all took me 2 or so months of very sporadic evenings - maybe 1 to 1.5 weeks of full time work. And as I said this was with no prior experience designing circuits or boards, or using any type of schematic capture or board layout software. I don't think I asked more than one or two questions on the list, but I did read the manual and look up a few things on the web.
I've had to create a number of symbols and footprints now, and found that some of the ones available on the web are not very good - especially the ones from the oshec library that are converted from Eagle. Some of those are fine and others are not. But I found it very easy to create new components. Hope that helps. I'm sure you can figure out more than I would know to tell you by downloading it and playing with it for a few hours. Moses On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 16:50 +0000, markjames_ipower wrote: > Hello, > > I'm new to KiCad, I've downloaded the last version and looked at it's > features and functionality. My company is at the point where we need > to decide if we should start using KiCad or buy one of the other > packages. I've used Orcad and Altium (and minor work with PADS and > PCAD) I'm not happy with most and really don't like Altium so I'm very > interested in KiCad. However, I don't have the time to do a project > with KiCad before my company decides; you have experience with this > program and it's evolution to this point. Do you think it is at the > point where we can put our trust in it as a primary design tool? > > I'd appreciate your input. > > Mark James
