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My only real complaints are the limitations of the free version, and the visual confusion with a busy pcb layout. It definitely feels as though it’s stood the test of time, and would be able to meet just about any challenge I could think of. You can click on a pin or net, and it shows the name in the status line, but that’s a bit cumbersome. Once you place a few parts, route some traces, and get everything nice, the board starts to look like a random sea of red, orange, and white geometric shapes. I looked for some options to change this, but didn’t find any. My biggest gripe was with the pcb layout tool: not enough things are labeled on your board as you lay it out.
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That made it impossible to tell if I was selecting a capacitor footprint with the leads 1 mm apart, or 1 inch. When you go to place a new component, it shows a preview of the footprint, but there’s no sizing grid or other dimension information. Identifying the right components by footprint was a bit of a pain. I found that made it a bit of a challenge to remember what F4 does, but I assume the settings can be changed, so it’s not a big deal. The default keys for actions like move, copy, delete, and place wire are all function keys instead of letters with some relationship to the actions. Or you’ll have to split you design into multiple boards.Ĭost aside, I do have a few other gripes. If you need more, you’ll have to buy one of the commercial versions, which will set you back between $500 and $1500, out of the reach of most hobbyists. The design rule checker stepped through potential issues one at a time, highlighting each one nicely.ĭepending on your project, the 2 layer and 10 x 8 cm limits may be a problem. The pcb layout tool automatically showed the 10 x 8 cm board outline, which I resized to make a smaller board. Afterward, I went back and ripped up some tracks, relaying them by hand to see how that experience was. The auto-router worked fairly well and routed the entire board. Going from the schematic to the pcb layout was pretty straightforward.
#DIPTRACE VS KICAD HOW TO#
The software felt reasonably logically designed, and I didn’t have to guess too much how to do things. I was able to go through the FTDI tutorial from start to finish in about an hour.
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I found Eagle fairly easy to use for a complete beginner. Choosing Eagle puts you in the mainstream as far as hobbyist pcb design goes, for better or worse. There’s also a tremendous amount of information available online about how to use Eagle, answers to common and not-so-common questions, tutorials, and other data. brd files directly, enabling you to skip the Gerber output step completely. Most pcb manufacturers will accept Eagle. Ladyada’s site also has an Eagle library. Sparkfun has a huge library of Eagle parts and footprints, and their tutorials use it as well. For this test, I used Eagle 5.8.0.Įagle’s biggest strength is its near universal adoption. I used the free version of Cadsoft Eagle, which has all the features of the commercial versions, but limits you to a single schematic page, 2 layers, and a 10 x 8 cm board area. For most people, though, I believe Eagle will be the better choice. The short version of my conclusions is that both packages work nicely, and will get the job done. My testing methodology was to follow Sparkfun’s Eagle tutorial, which involves creating a simple board based around an FTDI USB chip, and then to repeat the same tutorial creating the same board using KiCad.
![diptrace vs kicad diptrace vs kicad](https://i.imgur.com/4MS0yJw.png)
As a complete beginner who’s never made any kind of circuit board before, my priorities are doubtless different from what other people may value, but hopefully this comparison will be useful for others in a similar situation. I spent a little time evaluating Eagle and KiCad, two well-regarded pcb design tools for hobbyists, to see which one would best meet my needs for Tiny CPU’s board design.