freeware to draw schematics

[abbey road d enfer]

I've been using KiCAD for a few months now and once you get used to the library management it's quite usable, but yes, it's a weird way.

The solution for me was create a "Library" project, with my symbols and footprints loaded and  copy it's preferences in every project I start, took some time to build it and I have to upload it from time to time, but now I got an improved workflow.

Not only that. i think it's tedious to have to switch apps for going from schemo capture to netlist creation to PCB layout. In Eagle, it is simultaneous, you just have to click between schemo and layout.

 

[CJ]

http://groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=8387

 

[Andy Peters]

I've been using KiCAD for a few months now and once you get used to the library management it's quite usable, but yes, it's a weird way.

The solution for me was create a "Library" project, with my symbols and footprints loaded and  copy it's preferences in every project I start, took some time to build it and I have to upload it from time to time, but now I got an improved workflow.

Not only that. i think it's tedious to have to switch apps for going from schemo capture to netlist creation to PCB layout. In Eagle, it is simultaneous, you just have to click between schemo and layout.

For what it's worth, I have been using Kicad for over a year now, and have had three boards fabbed. All were without issue. I have been assisting the developers debugging the OS X version. I run bleeding-edge builds (I usually do the builds myself), so if you are using a version of Kicad that's a year or more old then a LOT has changed.

The main thing I should say is that they are in a feature freeze and are doing a lot of debugging and want to push out a new stable release Real Soon Now.  That's why there hasn't been much in the way of "new downloads."

The developer mailing list is quite active and they have been very responsive to bug reports and suggestions. I discovered a particularly pernicious bug in the PCB program, which caused it to crash hard, and was able to isolate what actions caused it, and the devs really got to work fixing it.

To address the "Separate apps" complaint: Kicad now has basically one program, the project manager, and from that you launch the layout editor and the schematic editor. They are reasonably closely coupled, in that if you select a part in the schematic, it is selected in the layout, and vice-versa. (You can launch the schematic symbol editor and the footprint editor from that project manager, too, or from within the respective editors.)

Yes, you still have to export a netlist from the schematic and then import it into the layout. That is something that will be streamlined after the stable release is out. (The gawdawful hack that is cvpcb will go away, too.)

Libraries, and library management, as always remain an issue, and it's not likely that everyone will be happy with the solution. Right now, the schematic and the layout libraries are separate, and there is some debate about how and whether an Altium-like "integrated library" system should be implemented.

For layout they have a thing called "Library Tables," where you specify which footprint libraries are visible, so when a netlist is imported it will find the correct footprints.  The library table is global, so all of your projects can reference it and have all of your footprints available. (Footprints also get embedded in the pcb layout file.)

Schematics still have a system where you select which libraries are available. In each schematic symbol is a footprint field, and that can be populated by the name of a footprint library and the correct footprint in that library. This eliminates a lot of weirdness where one might have (because of using several of the freely-available libraries) two footprints called SOIC-8 (each in a different library) and the netlist import chooses the "wrong one" as a result.

After the stable release they want to implement a schematic library tables system, and also embed the symbols in the schematic file so you don't have to provide the libraries to someone with whom you are sharing the design. (Right now there's a symbol "cache" file which keeps a copy of all symbols added to a schematic.)

Anyways, the above is all a bit long, but I think that Kicad has come a long way in the last couple of years. It runs well on OS X (important to me, you might not care) and other platforms.

PCB design isn't a trivial process, so it's unreasonable to expect it to be easy to learn quickly. (Same goes for Altium and OrCad and Eagle.)

-a

 

[dirtyhanfri]

Hi Andy

Nice to know you're in touch with the dev team.

One thing I've thought many times is to make the "Get And Move Footprint" action available to get multiple footprints at a time, I mean, if you want to get maybe C54, C55, C56, C57 & C89 write something like "C54-57, 89" in the pop-up window you get when press "T" and get that footprints simultaneously to place them wherever you want.

I don't know if someone more finds this useful, maybe somebody pointed it in the mailing list...