Re: For those struggling with migration to KiCAD

Den Sat, 24 Mar 2018 18:14:49 +0100 skrev silverdr@wfmh.org.pl:
> Executive summary, AKA TL;DR - if I was eventually able to do it with
> some, acceptable level of success after decades of using EAGLE -
> anyone can do it :-)

Thanks for sharing your experience!
As I've just started to use KiCad I'll add my experiences:

> The full story - I lost count which time it was that I tried, and all
> previous ones failed. This time I eventually succeeded. I both
> started and finished a project without touching EAGLE. What I can
> list as key factors, which you may want to have in mind on your next
> approach ;-) is the following:
> 
> - take a really small but at the same time a non-trivial project.
> - something that you would do in EAGLE in not more than a few hours,
> but
> - something that requires all elements of a bigger design, just in
> small quantities.
> - ground/power planes, vias, components with exchangeable
> gates/pins, ...

... or do something really small just to get a feel on how it works.
Then when you do something bigger you can flip to the smaller project
to try out the stuff you haven't already done in the smaller project.

> - give it more than part of your weekend, something like 5-10 times
> more than in EAGLE
> - use the "unstable" aka "nightly" builds, don't even touch the old
> "stable"

I've only tested the stable 4.02 version included in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

> - learn all main single-key keyboard shortcuts (they are actually
> surprisingly intuitive)

My impression is that the keyboard shortcuts seems to clash.

> - use only the "modern (accelerated) toolset". Forget the rest.

I use the one thats default, whichever that is. My only problem is that
it's rather graphics intensive when you move/place stuff. It's fine if
you think my setup is crazy, but I actually run stuff on my Linux box
via VNC onto a Windows desktop box. When using VNC moving stuff is
really slow. You learn to place the mouse pointer as close as possible
to the correct position and then use the keyboard to actually select a
new component or whatever you are going to do.

> - have forum.kicad.info open all the time ;-)

I dug up a few tutorials on the net, used mostly parts of one of them,
and searched the net for various stuff that I struggled with while
learning.

> - I was able to crash the last "unstable" build only once during
> three days of work! It is still not in EAGLE's league (one crash in
> almost three decades, after I manually modified its files in a wrong
> way) but it is an enormous improvement over the "stable" (V4 I think)
> one, which kept crashing on me every couple of minutes / mouse
> clicks. I don't know how the builds for other platforms behave(d) but
> the OSX version was _that_ bad in terms of stability. This
> (literally) show-stopping problem seems to be under control now.

I haven't been able to crash KiCad at all. But that is an older version.

> - True, there are inconsistencies in EAGLE too but KiCAD looks like
> there is a huge pile of legacy stuff behind it and there is no
> dictator who would tell everyone to just forget the legacy and order
> the devs to bring consistency between various subprograms of the
> suite. Some things work differently in eeschema, in pcbnew, in
> footprint editor, in symbol editor, etc., etc. Yes, you learn those
> things eventually but you shouldn't have to, IMO. I tend to blame it
> at least in sizeable part on "democratic" process of Free Software
> development.

Maybe this is something that will be sorted out eventually? My
impression is that there isn't that much difference between eeschema
and pcbnew in 4.0.2.
 
> - General lack of polish in most areas (although much better than
> earlier versions). A trivial example: why tooltips of the GUI buttons
> don't show the equivalent keyboard shortcut and force me to open the
> shortcut list window instead? But there is many, many more in every
> corner and often need to be worked around one way or another.

This is unfortunately generally all too common on software that can run
in Linux :(

> - Libraries. Honestly - it's a mess.

In the old 4.0.2 version there is also a real lack of basic components.
I'm not expecting 6509 to be there, but it's really bad that for
example 556 is missing. (It's apparently added later as I found a newer
version of the libraries and used the 556 from those newer libraries).

> - the damned, hardcoded, non-angular font with O in place of 0 (no
> slashed zero!)
> - the inability to "flow" copper around your text (you end up with an
> ugly, rectangular hole)
> 
> 
> Good luck! All in all - I believe it's worth it, especially given
> current circumstances around EAGLE.

I suspect Eagles change in licensing will do good for KiCad
developement. 



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