--- In [email protected], Robert <birmingham_spi...@...> wrote: > > I just wanted to feed back some comments from a major appliance > manufacturer who recently received some PCBs created by me using Kicad. > They described the prototypes as being of "excellent quality". The > two boards, which are a mixture of digital and analogue circuitry, both > worked first time. The quality of the Kicad software played a > significant part in that, so I would like to pass on that praise to the > Kicad authors, and thank them for producing an excellent suite of software. > > Previously I used commercial PCB software. It was a nightmare to use > and most boards would have problems requiring revisions. > > Regards, > > Robert. >
Seems the places offering PCB packages costing thousands should be worried. I've tried demos of practically every package I could find and settled on KiCad. It's not perfect, but none of them are, some of the expensive stuff is downright lousy. The main gripes I have about it so far are these: No easy way to designate jumpers for single sided boards. I've been using enlarged vias but this is not ideal. It would be really great if I could just plunk down a couple of standard pads of the desired size/shape and designate them as connected. I've seen products that have a wire component that can be used to connect between points. Similarly, I can't just plunk down pads arbitrarily in the layout. I like to use pads to designate mounting screw holes and such, or for test points, flying leads, etc. It really ought to be possible to place pads without them being part of a package. Trace width selection is cumbersome, rather than a dropdown list of common widths with the option to enter an arbitrary list, it seems one has to create a list of trace sizes otherwise by default there is only one available, and there is a limit of 7(?) custom sizes. Some operations automatically place the mouse cursor near where it thinks you want to be working, but I find this really annoying because I'll click something in the toolbar and then suddenly the cursor pops up somewhere else. The mouse pointer should never move unless the mouse is moved. There is no default package-symbol assignment, one has to assign a package to each symbol separately. It would be really convenient if components in the schematic editor were already associated with a package for the layout which could then be changed if desired. Other than that, great software and the price is right.
