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[on:]

I admit I am a bit spoiled with Altium but OMFG. Something that should have taken an hour just took 3 in kicad, and what am i greeted with?

whenever I try to export it borks half my pins, half my traces, redraws my schematic and asks me if I want to save this cluster FK

I dont care if its free and free, its garbage, I just wasted a night on a atmega 328, sd card, max232 and a voltage regulator, and I cant even print it off to PDF, export to SVG or anything else without it totally screwing it up

I would have been better off hand drawing it and scanning it ... cant beleive I even wasted my time learning this hodgepodge of CRAP

ugh!

EDIT: I cant even get to their site to see if theres an update, 504 Gateway Timeout...

[Reply #1 on:]

have you tried EAGLE?

[Reply #2 on:]

yes, in the past, I was put off by the restricted pcb size, but over time I have noticed that I really haven't used more than that for most projects.

In all honestly before anyone tries to sell me on anything, I have Altium Designer with a full license on a work laptop I am allowed to take home. But it looks like for most my simple projects where I dont feel like dragging yet another computer home Eagle seems tops

[Reply #3 on:]

Have you tried Design Spark PCB

http://www.designspark.com/pcb

[Reply #4 on:]

Not trying to sell you EAGLE but even from an outsider's view, as myself is not and EE, EAGLE is not hard to use and for simple boards is sufficient. I'm glad I can check kicad off my list of most wanted skills for a while so thanks for complaining!

[Reply #5 on:]

Maybe it is just you who are unable to use KiCAD.

I have laid out plenty of boards using KiCAD, managing just fine with everything you complain about. Yes it has it quirks, but it is simply one of the best free tools out there in my opinion.

[Reply #6 on:]

An interesting post count. As a DB developer, this looks familiar...

[Reply #7 on:]

@AaronDC: posts in bar sport don't count to your total.

[Reply #8 on:]

Maybe it is just you who are unable to use KiCAD.

I have laid out plenty of boards using KiCAD, managing just fine with everything you complain about. Yes it has it quirks, but it is simply one of the best free tools out there in my opinion.

I have managed to lay out boards many times in KiCAD, and yes its one of the best totally free tools, out of a pool of what 2? Its useless to me if its going to pull random garbage out of its hat at any second, my time is more valuable than redoing work multiple times do to quirks and random crashes.

PS: I dont consider loosing half your work in a single click or dumping out of existence cause you rotate a part one too many times "quirks", those are deal breaking bugs.

[Reply #9 on:]

@AaronDC: posts in bar sport don't count to your total.

Ahhhh. thanks.

[Reply #10 on:]

Just use DipTrace: it rules.

It is extremely easy to use, and has a fulll-featured free version. Besides, it has a very complete library, with over 90,000 components, including some 3D componets.

I've been using it for the last year, and the boards I had manufactured by iTead Studio where designed in DipTrace.