Cross-module management ensures that principal circuits can be easily converted into a PCB, back-annotated, or imported/exported from/to other EDA software, CAD formats and net-lists.
I tend to have fairly elaborate board outlines but I'd say unless I'm using some obscure part outine that I'd need to make, when I get the board outline and manual parts placement done in KiCAD the work is about half complete.Screenshot of Schematic Capture in DipTrace v3 (2016)Īdvanced circuit design tool with support of multi-sheet and multi-level hierarchical schematics that delivers a number of features for visual and logical pin connections. Now my PCBs are majority through-hole but KiCAD's libraries are very modern and there are no limitations in that regard either way. Also the old package was "mils only" but KiCAD will do English or metric, also with KiCAD you can place parts at any angle whereas in the old package you were restricted to the major axes. The only issue with the router is it's a tiny bit "finicky" since the board outline has to be EXACTLY closed in order for the routing to proceed so you have to watch out for that, I think it takes a little more time for the router to finish but with the old package you had to have really great parts placement to get the router to even complete, with the KiCAD router it has to be almost impossible to "stump" it and the results are MUCH better.
Under the old package I could always count on open part and schematic libraries, the KiCAD libraries are open too but the libraries supplied are much larger, the parts content is "a little" Eurocentric but in all cases if I hadn't bought a specific part already I was able to find a "near-equivalent" already in KiCAD, I haven't even needed to create any part outlines yet but I believe it isn't too hard. I had four projects (each 2 layer) under the old package that I upgraded to KiCAD and there weren't many problems at all. Now KiCAD has a terrific "shove" or "rip and reroute" router, technically it's not "part of the package" but actually it integrates pretty well. I'm intrigued that nobody here is talking specifically about the autorouter, that old package had one which worked OK for 2 layer boards but it really wouldn't allocate many traces to a third or higher layer unless those first two layers were power-only, it was a "Manhattan-style" router. OK I "cut my teeth" PCB-wise on an old package called Circuitmaker(schematic)/Traxmaker(PCB) which did the job OK but by modern standards it was pretty limited.
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