November 15, 2019

KiCAD - schematic and PCB design

First a rant. Why is the term "schematic capture" used? Where are these schematics running around wild that me might capture them?

If you even do get a PCB made, how about soldering SMD parts?

KiCAD is easy to install on Fedora 30 linux: 

su
dnf install kicad kicad-doc
After this type "kicad" and it starts up without any error messages. This gives me version 5.1.4, which is the latest available.

KiCAD is pronounced KeeCAD, to rhyme with keester apparently.

Now the trick is to learn how to use it.

My first example

I make a directory "KiCAD" in my home directory. I start a new project and call it "demo1" I found the first tutorial in the following list nice -- and it didn't involve watching a video!

The Sparkfun tutorial is OK, but has two flaws. One is that you aren't starting from scratch, but rather you are editing an already existing example. The other is that they seem to think you know about something called "eagle" that I have no experience with.

A short list of vital keyboard shortcuts:

To get output, you can use print to get a PDF with borders and the title block. More useful for what I want is to use File -- Plot and select SVG. A related trick is to select the "paper size" you want to target (under File -- Page settings).

Inkscape works fine to scale the SVG that comes out of KiCAD (which is fairly microscopic).

Tips from Daniel

I have been communicating with Daniel Flohr (January, 2023). I asked him about KiCAD, expecting him to scoff and sneer. Instead he gave a full dose of encouragement and a lot of tips:
KiCad absolutely. As with anything, it takes time to learn how all of the pieces integrate together. Me and the EE, ME team have been doing it for a while so a lot of the pieces were already in place. Managing the part symbols, footprints and 3D files to get the rendering is straightforward (once you've done it hundreds of times) .

Also a lot of tricks; for example like PCB outline (like this where the board needed to be a certain size with a particular shape) are just learned over time. (Phone Camera -> email -> Photoshop ->Kicad Image scaler/converter)

Kicad is fine. One of the main reasons I've used it is that over the years, I've used many overseas EE and layout people. Kicad being free makes that possible. I'm sure that the expensive big name CAD systems have more capabilities, especially in autorouting. For the kind of boards I've always done, 2 or 4 layers, auto routing never has really added anything. I'm very particular about routing and getting the placement and mapping right makes it far easier to route.

You just need good eyes, a magnifier and good tweezers to place SMT parts. Hand soldering ok on 0603 size or larger parts. ICs like SOIC can be hand soldered as well. Forget any fine pitch parts.

Solder paste stencils are cheap. When we build out new fully populated boards we'll use the toaster reflow oven. Also have a special hot air gun that we use for rework and changing single parts. Boards with really fine pitch parts we have an outside assembler do.

RF is tricky but the reference designs from Silabs and from the antenna companies reduce how smart you have to be to play in RF voodoo land. LTE and Bluetooth not particularly difficult. We have a small solder paste reflow oven which we built from a kit supplied by this guy. Has always worked great for our prototypes.

What happened to Eagle?

And at this point, who cares? (I suppose I would care if I was using Eagle as a "free" product and they pulled the rug out from under me with expensive fees and licensing -- but that was just before my time).

At one time "Eagle" was the king of hobbyist and small user schematic "capture" and PCB design. Now KiCAD has clearly supplanted it.

In 2016, Autodesk purchased Eagle. Prior to that, Eagle made available a free license for education and small users. As of 2017 a free educational license was available, or a $15 per month subscription license.

Hackaday apparently is not an unbiased source to evaluate Eagle. Key people working for Eagle once were key players in Hackaday. And Hackaday old timers learned Eagle long ago and admit they don't want to tackle another learning curve with KiCAD, whether it is better or not. Apparently lies were told about what would happen with licensing when Autodesk acquired Eagle, and except for Hackaday insiders, people are unwilling to forgive and forget.

One fellow said:

This guy likes DIPtrace, which is commercial.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Electronics pages / tom@mmto.org