Eagle vs. KiCad

[macuserman]

So I'm needing to dust off my design skills I haven't done it in quite a few years here, but I've got some upcoming projects and I went to get Eagle and I saw they switched to subscription only a few years ago I'm sure old news to most of you. It's not that expensive long term and you can always drop the subscription and sign up again if needed. I don't think KiCad was really even a thing back when I was doing board design, anyhow I was pretty decent in eagle and I have numerous part libraries I had created etc which is very time consuming to do and it's so nice to be able to just import all my old stuff. However, KiCad looks like it has come a long ways and is free, but ugh I hate to lose all my old libraries designing parts is really time consuming. So I'm just wondering if any of you have any thoughts on the difficulty of designing parts in KiCad is it easier than Eagle, also are there lots of libraries available for KiCad? I've never used it but I know there were and are tons of libraries available for Eagle. Anyhow just looking for some thoughts from some of you who have done PCB work more recently than I have. I've seen several neat projects kicking around here and have got bitten by the bug.

 

[cheesestraws]

Keeping an eye on this thread - I'm just starting doing board design, and I am trying to work out what tools to use for the duration. Thanks for posting it.

 

[macuserman]

Keeping an eye on this thread - I'm just starting doing board design, and I am trying to work out what tools to use for the duration. Thanks for posting it.

Nice! I found it to be very theraputic and relaxing back in the day when I was actively doing it. These days I'm still closely working on hardware but as a Firmware Engineer instead so I don't really ever get to do board design work just look at schematics and work on the programming side with the design already done. But I'd like to start doing some hobby work for a few projects some computer related and some car related as I'm deep into both hobbies. But the library stuff is key for me I don't really care about schematic layout or board layout, I prefer to hand route my traces anyways so auto routing is meh although maybe it's come a long ways but I'd rather make everything just so how I want it than to trust the auto router. But the biggest drag and the thing I hate more than anything is to be stuck spending lots of time making part designs so that they can be imported into a schematic so having a large library is a big deal I would rather pay a few bucks for Eagle if I don't have to waste time designing parts as often.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Keeping an eye on this thread - I'm just starting doing board design, and I am trying to work out what tools to use for the duration. Thanks for posting it.

Ditto! What comes to mind for me here is the notion of sharing libraries developed by members in whatever package in KiCad format. I've been on the fence about going with KiCad for some time now.

On the back burner is the learning experience of running my dongled, full on professional PowerPCB Win95 era package under Win98se.

I've got a similar thread somewhere around here comparing several packages current a few years ago, including KiCad?

 

[macuserman]

Ditto! What comes to mind for me here is the notion of sharing libraries developed by members in whatever package in KiCad format. I've been on the fence about going with KiCad for some time now.

On the back burner is the learning experience of running my dongled, full on professional PowerPCB Win95 era package under Win98se.

I've got a similar thread somewhere around here comparing several packages current a few years ago, including KiCad?

I'll have to look for your thread, I know there are tons of libraries shared online for all kinds of stuff for Eagle just not sure if there is that same lvl of content available for KiCad. Maybe it's just me but I hate having to sit with the datasheet looking at package dimensions and carefully translating that into a part possibly even a few parts depending on what your working on before you can even get started with the schematic.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Building parts in KiCad might be the way for everyone to go at this point. If there's no Eagle (et al) format export function for custom parts, maybe someone could develop a utility for doing so? Assuming here that KiCad can import Eagle format already or sait utility would be bi-directional?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Can the two packages save, import/export parts to PDF, a CAD format like DXF or raw Gerbers?

 

[ymk]

I can't comment on Eagle. If you're looking at KiCad, I encourage you to try it out.

Many libraries are available in Github and KiCad can access them directly, though I recommend downloading them since the program can hang temporarily when accessing remote libraries.

Digikey also maintains libraries available for download.

The 3D board view is neat and it's possible to import component models from Blender and elsewhere.

The footprint and component library management is a bit awkward though.

 

[Melkhior]

KiCad is really nice; I hadn't done PCB design before Covid but I actually managed to create my own vintage-compatible board with no issue in KiCad. Also using it for something more relevant to this forum. More and more suppliers (symbols, footprint) and manufacturers (PCB shops) are supporting it, too, it seems.

 

[aladds]

I learnt EAGLE as part of my degree course, but back then there was a proper free version which only limited board size. When they switched to a subscription only model, I followed the rather rapid advancement of KiCAD, and then earlier this year gave it a go - the transition was surprisingly easy, although the FreeRouter auto-router isn't very good compared to EAGLE's (although it's made me a few boards which are acceptable)

If you mostly manually route, KiCAD is absolutely the best option these days, and even if you auto-route it's good enough for small projects.

 

[macuserman]

Thanks for all these answers guys, I have a small board I'm going to be doing soon so I'll give KiCAD a try and see how I like it.

 

[mmu_man]

KiCAD made a lot of effort on their standard library in the recent years, it used to not be very stable before.
Also, the documentation mentions importing Eagle footprints, but I never tested this.