At Open Sauce, several people told me kiCAD is better and there are several great JLC plugins.
EasyEDA basic seems to be coming to an end so I need to change to pro (still free), or kiCAD.
Any strong opinions either way?
Like I said in the other thread, I would go with KiCad due to some annoyances I noticed with EasyEDA. KiCad also looks like it has a lot of better libraries for other options if you want to get away from the JLC workflow. They may be a cheap option now but I don’t like the idea of getting locked into an ecosystem that pulls you towards one supplier/manufacturer/assembler even if that’s only by making that the ‘easy’ option.
All it takes is one batch of boards causing issues due to being ghost shift parts, some opportunist selling through QC rejects or even outright fakes and you’ll see the value in a trustworthy supply chain.
KiCad is also being independently supported by Digikey, who are my preferred parts supplier by a LONG way, which is nice. They have a lot of integration there too where they’re constantly adding new parts to the library and have one of the better parametrized searches available for when you need to find new parts to add etc.
I typically design for prototype manufacture based around buying from Digikey wherever possible and then for manufacturing I start with my Chinese CM manufacturing sourcing those exact parts and then over time cost reducing by moving to their preferred local suppliers for parts that aren’t critical like generic semiconductors etc.
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My work used to use KiCAD until they switched to Eagle a long time ago. I’m not sure why they switched, but I bet it was some dumb IT policy.
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Could be open source licensing stuff? When I was at Qualcomm they were quite cautious of anything open source where a product can be an output of the software. No problems using it for design assistance, simulation etc. but anything like using it for coding, CAD, compilation, etc. turned into a pain. Made some things dramatically more complicated than necessary, in my opinion, but it was somewhat understandable given that they were trying to be ‘beyond any possible reproach’ in that aspect.
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Yeah. Lockheed Martin only let us keep Linux after they made us switch to red hat so they could actually buy it. I’m pretty sure they have lost that privilege since I left. Corporate policies are not designed to handle open source software. It is very frustrating.
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This is actually a good heads up, may need to migrate my projects over. Can you import design files from easyEDA to things like KiCAD easy enough?
Apparently KiCad has built in importer for EasyEDA projects.
From a quick google there are a couple of comments saying it’s not a great way to get a project together and that you might be better off re-creating it if it’s somewhat simple. I’ve never had a whole lot of luck with transferring projects between packages and having them come out remotely well, but that may depend a lot on the overall complexity.
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