The PCB EDA space really needs some competition. Kicad is really getting there, it "just" needs some UI improvements (Automation of the Schematic->Netlist->pcbnew flow would be nice) and also some of the big boy features like signal integrity and heat etc.
Altium is probably the only clean PCB experience at the moment, and even that sits at 10% CPU on my machine with an empty schematic and no PCB open. The more esoteric tools like Mentor and Cadence's tools (and presumably Keysight's offerings although I can't get a student license through my university * ) are powerful but quite difficult to use working alone in the sense that schematic capture is quite slow because you need to (if I'm not doing something wrong) source your own library or make your own - not really competing with Kicad as such.
* The student license options these companies have are absolutely insane. You'd think they don't want people to learn to use their software. Altium's site doesn't work with non-american email addresses, Mentor doesn't include any RF/Thermal/Mixed-Signal simulation addons i.e. the only reason to learn to use it over kicad, Cadence took about 2 weeks to respond and ended up publishing a Photo of my student license with my name on their website if you know where to look (Indexed by number)
As an absolute beginner learning how to design PCBs and simple circuits for hobby projects - I have to say while KiCAD is getting there, it really still has a learning-curve of a sheer cliff. The interface and workflow seem arbitrary and unnecessary complex for what should be a relatively straightforward process. I realize this tool is far more powerful than I'll ever need but it really does feel like I'm in way over my head most times. While it "Just" needs some UI improvements, those are non trivial for me.
Electrical engineers are willing to put up with so much more it seems.
>Electrical engineers are willing to put up with so much more it seems.
In general, IMHO. EAGLE, a golden-standard proprietary EDA tool, while still being quite a bit ahead of KiCad on the UX front, features no fewer pitfalls and completely unintuitive controls.
For simple projects, EasyEDA is basic but simple to use and free.
Nice feature is that sending your boards to JLCPCB is a click away as well as ordering some parts from LCSC as they are all the same company and many components are already defined.
Although, like any other EDA, you really need to check the footprints or make your own.
Not all EDA software is like that. I had a similar "sheer cliff" experience to you with Kicad. If you aren't already an EDA expert don't even bother.
I suggest trying DesignSpark PCB. It's not open source, and Windows-only (though I suspect it would run perfectly under Wine). But unlike Eagle, Kicad, gEDA, etc. it has a vaguely sane interface (it's still has a weird zoom though) and beginners can actually use it to design real PCBs.
A year and a half ago we abandoned using Cadence and Altium in favour of KiCAD. Extremely high cost of licensing was a reason, but not the only one. Our first steps with KiCAD were hard and tiresome, my engineers even tried to sabotage the work a couple of times. But now as we got used to KiCAD I'm pretty much happy with this decision. KiCAD's GUI needs rework, also its net naming convension is flowed (try to re-annotate the whole project an you most likely will lose your PCB design because of incompatible net names). Yet, if you understand what is going on under the hood you can work around the issues. Since we switched to KiCAD we have been able to successfully design (and test) a couple of complicated PCBs with DDR3 and 0.4mm pitch BGAs. In this regard, I would be happy to see more ppl starting open source EDA projects. A decent Gerber editing tool is a need!
You'd think they don't want people to learn to use their software.
I feel like they work on the same principle as Adobe: pirate our software when you're learning, so you get used to it, then pay for it/ask your company to pay for it when you're working. I clearly remember one of the top Google recommended searches for "Altium" was "Altium full crack download"...
Except Adobe had fairly affordable student licenses too, and lots of ways of getting them. (E.g. signing up for Photoshop evening classes for a few weeks could qualify you to get one)
The concept of having split tools for schematic and pcb just doesn’t cut it any more. Nowadays most companies have transitioned or are transitioning to do layout inhouse, because modern products are so integrated that the “old ways”, doing sch inhouse and sending it to a company for layout has become very cumbersome.
IMO one of the key things for any new EDA package is making a wise choice on how to store their files. Being able to script stuff that works on your files is becoming a necessity, and packages like Altium can’t compete with that easily because they use binary files for the most important (sch and pcb). For me at least, storing info as textfiles is a must to consider a switch, because the biggest issue with Altium is how bad it interacts with tools like git.
for small projects, this schematic/layout duality is really quite cumbersome. I really don't mind the warts in the layout section, there isn't that much to go wrong...but the parts management - making a crappy symbol, making a crappy footprint, making sure those are aligned...dealing with the ridiculous library notion. what a waste of time.
but kicad at least has an approachable format. so I wrote some crappy tooling to at least generate symbol and layout from a single description. and I could theoretically write a front end and leverage things like Gerber generation.
I don't understand why we don't have vendor supplied footprints in a tool-neutral textual format yet. I know people have tried - who are the contenders?
Yes unfortunately the develops are not receptive to improving this. They feel that any attempt to make it more intuitive or easy to use is dumbing it down. Disappointing.
You’ll never get those add-ons in a free package, as it takes institutional knowledge and full-time work to develop it, which cost $$.
Cadence, Keysight, etc. provide the licenses to universities, not individual students, but they are pretty easy to get. Sounds like you need to work the channels through a professor.
Easier said than done when you're studying physics rather than EE, and during lockdown. I've got the software now, it just took a ridiculously long amount of time for them to give me a generic text file. Altium didn't work at all so I definitely didn't borrow a friends .edu email wink wink.
The Keysight website doesn't actually have a list of universities in its software program so I didn't bother checking whether I could apply.
> You’ll never get those add-ons in a free package, as it takes institutional knowledge and full-time work to develop it, which cost $$.
Given the amount of malware (sorry - I mean license management) the software comes with its their own fault if a team of one student manages to design their own motherboard or similar. Realistically I just wanted to play with some CAD software.
As much as I do like KiCAD, and use it professionally, the UX at times is literally a comical design-by-committee dumpster fire.
I gave this a spin, and it's so refreshingly the opposite of that.
My main barrier to using it for my next project is this - am I going to get 100 hours into a project then hit a brick wall and have to port back over to KiCAD. If I had some confidence around this I think it'd give it a shot.
A gallery on the website of projects completed with it would probably do the trick.
Seriously pleased this project is a thing. In 2020 there isn't really an excuse to be using software with such a poor UI/UX as KiCAD
Sorry replying to my own comment here, but this needs to be said. THANK YOU KiCAD developers. Yes it has issues but I am very grateful, comments above aside.
I'd like to pile on here and say that, for all its issues, KiCAD is an extremely valuable and important tool in the EDA space. Hobbyist PCB making at this scale simply would not be possible without it.
That said, I am very happy to see new entrants, like Horizon. I watched a presentation by the author in the 2018 FOSDEM and it looked like a great idea even back then, I'm going to try it for my next project to see how it has progressed.
Wayne Stambaugh, the KiCAD project lead, was in that presentation, and they're very much aware of the problems KiCAD has. They're working in that direction, as KiCAD 5 no longer requires you to export/import the netlist, I believe (I'm not sure because I reflexively always do it anyway).
One of the first questions they had towards the Horizon developer was "why make a new tool instead of contributing to KiCAD?", and the answer, IIRC, was "It was easier to make my own", which sounds reasonable given the amount of innovation that went into Horizon and the constraints a project as widespread as KiCAD would have, regarding backwards compatibility etc.
Would love to see more features supporting RF. Obviously the dream would be a 2D or 2.1D mesh/simulate built in, but would settle for less.
An easy starting point is better import/export of layouts. Designing an antenna in my RF-specific CAD suite is great, but when I actually have to build the thing, all I get is DXFs. Converting DXF to gerbers is a mess in KiCAD. Same goes if I want to reverse the pipe and simulate my layout.
Staying in the OSS realm, QUCS (open source ADS equivalent) has RF circuit simulation, just needs some help implementing auto-layout. This would make it trivial to e.g. optimize a simple transmission line circuit, and have it fabbed. That'd be huge for opening up simple microwave circuits to the DIY/"hacker" community.
Ugh, no. I have been using RF CAD since HP MDS. You’ll end up with a convoluted mess like ADS, where the EM package is now a separate application from the main package. I ditched it 20 years ago; good riddance.
The Microwave Office guys knew this 25 years ago, which is why it’s so much better than ADS. It is all tightly integrated and object oriented.
I am a KiCad user, should I switch to Horizon and why?
From the docs it seems like your main selling point is a better library, why not just make a better library for KiCad?
I only got to know about LibrePCB at the end of 2016 after several months of development on Horizon EDA. While there are some similarities such as the use of UUIDs and strong link between schematic and netlist, there are major architectural differences such as Horizon EDA using raw OpenGL vs QTSceneGraph(?) and Gtkmm vs QT.
As far as I can tell, the development models also differ significantly: The LibrePCB devs seem to be focused on doing things the right way the first time such as having a proper operation-based undo/redo stack whereas horizon just stores a copy of the whole schematic/board for undo/redo. They also seem to focus more on simplicity for beginners rather than more advanced features such as length tuning and advanced design rules.
Putting development effort where I like enabled me do to the board for my master thesis https://github.com/carrotIndustries/x-band-tx/ (4 Layers, differential pairs, length-matched traces) in Horizon EDA only after about 2 years after the initial beginning of development.
1. Yes it does, has even a Annotation mode to add sheet increments for part numbers (e.g. R101, R102, etc for the first sheet, R201, R202, etc for the second sheet). Pasting between sheets works, having multiple gatesn (e.g. of a hex inverter) spread out over multiple sheets works as well.
2. yes, including global or per-net rules for thermal relief, spacing etc. It warns you if nets have not been recalculated on Fabrication output. Adding them is simply: draw a polygon, right-click and "Add Plane", there you have to select any names net.
3. there is length tuning built in, but quite frankly I never had to use it, so I don't know if that is what you're looking for
1. Does Horizon support an equivalent to the 'Variant Manager?' This is something that will allow variance of build outputs (different component populations, different schematic text, etc).
2. In the docs it seems to mention submitting parts to the default pool. If people submit parts to the pool are there style guides somewhere? (line widths, US vs EU resistor symbols, etc)
3. Looking at a random SMD footprint (SOT-363) it looks like the paste window is equal to the pads. Is there a way to set paste mask expansion like is done in Altium? (Automatically offset paste window from pad by some amount)
1. Opening up your first project is not straightforward. Instead of just opening with a blank project and letting you add a resistor, the app asks a lot of rather irritating and irrelevant questions (who cares who the "author" is at creation time, and couldn't it guess anyways?) that could be better decided later. Worst offense: the "create" button is grayed. As in: nope, you won't be able to use me until you answer all the useless trivia.
2. Horizon seems to cling to the "main window launches sub-apps" paradigm (much like kicad). This is a rather confusing UX workflow. At the very least, it clutters up your desktop. Why can't all sub-app live under one roof ? I mean even gimp has finally given up on the broken multiple top window idea ages ago.
3. Couldn't find any standard old-timey thru-hole parts in the default "pool": 2N2222, 2N3904 standard, LEDs. Not fashionable these days for serious work, but still very much in demand by the hobby crowd.
4. To place a part, it looks like you have to select the *exact* component you need right away. Why? . Why can't I just place a generic NPN in the diagram and then refine what part it'll actually be later on ?
5. The part browser : why so many search boxes ? I want a Google-style single search box that's smart enough to match what I'm saying to a given part. Finding a part shouldn't be like entering an SQL statement. Fuzzy matcher please.
6. Right-click on a component: a mile long menu, no "part properties" entry. When I finally locate the "change symbol" entry (in a sub-menu), it sends you to a subtly different UI than the part browser.
7. No navigation buttons in sight. Where's "Frame All", "Frame component"
8. Components are hard (near impossible) to just grab-and-move
I'll have to play with it more, but the initial interaction with the UX is kinda icky.
[edit]: forgot to mention installation. On ubuntu, this was not exactly straightforward. Choice between installing a binary through flatpak (non-standard thing I don't have) or building from scratch (there went 30mn of my day). Almost made me open the windows laptop that's specifically reserved for running win-only crapware.
- on 1: Starting projects: for me it is only entering a project title and selecting a path, which is reasonable unless you are the type who wants to decide things like these in the end on saving.
- on 2: While I also like single window concepts better (with panes like Blender), I think having schematic, board and pool/library editors in seperate windows is kinda reasonable.
- on 4: You actually can. You are not forced to use existing parts if you use "Place component"
- on 6: Given how the whole thing works, such a thing like "Part properties" doesn't really make sense. In Horizon everything you place on the schematic is either a generic unit (E.g. "Two-terminal resistor") where you can enter a value or a existing part mapped to this generic unit (e.g. a "ERJ-6ENF2003"). This is (on purpose) different from how other EDA-tools do it, but in practise it works quite well. The point on the different assign window is something I'd like to have changed as well : )
- on 8: if you want to move something you have to use the move tool which you invoke by pressing the m key. You can also move things with the arrow keys.
Generally the UX paradigm of horizon is very much built around single key shortcuts or key sequences. And if you don't know the keys just press the spacebar and search for the command and it will tell you right there.
As for now the experience for power users is very fluid, but when it comes to installation, onboarding etc. the whole thing could use a lot of improvement (and are gladly beeing worked on).
Gtk's and horizon's OpenGL requirements (3.3 core profile + extensions) likely aren't met by whatever graphics adapter your VM implementation provides.
Nice work! The world badly needs a FOSS EDA program that isn't insane.
Any plans for Mac downloads? And also, does its component model separate out schematic symbols and pin assignment (like DesignSpark PCB and I assume others) or are they inseparable (like KicadPCB)?
When producing a placement file for a PCB, can component part numbers be exported ? Neither Cadence, nor KiCAD stores components in their PCB files, only footprints, so part numbers cannot be easily accessed.
Tangent: I'm about to start learning EDA and what I really want is a data format for my designs. Something that I can write my own code to generate and manipulate as well as using standard GUI tools.
Is there any "data first" EDA package? Something more "docbook" and less "Microsoft Word"?
At KiCon 2019 there was a presentation on SKiDL which allows you to describe circuits in Python. You can then output a netlist for use in KiCAD's PCB tool (or potentially other EDA tools). I have not tried to use it personally.
Same question -- I've been using Kicad on personal and light-duty professional projects for about 5 years (yeah, Altium is the real deal, but when you're making a small run of prototypes for a university lab, sometimes you use the tools you have). It definitely has some rough edges, but it's also got a very established ecosystem, so I feel like Horizon will have to be a massive improvement to compete.
I use horizon for more than a year now and have quite a few pcbs from it in production. What made me pick up horizon was mostly Autodesk's aquisiton of Eagle and kicads messy library concept.
Horizon misses nothing (for me) now and has a beautifully efficent UX compared to Eagle and KiCAD. Their library concept is also well thought through, so I don't have the feeling I am wasting my time when I am contributing parts.
The downsides are:
- you still have to create many parts yourself (but parts, packages, etc are json and generating them can help a lot)
- horizon supports only newer OpenGL versions, so if your machine is old it might not run
Other than that I'd take it over all the others every day (and I do).
I've been using Kicad for the same workloads as you, and Altium + Cadence for heavier ones over the years, and I must say they hit the nail on the head here with their comments about KiCad:
https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/why-another-eda...
I'll have to find a simple project to test this out on though, because as you say, It needs to be a huge improvement on KiCad to warrant a switch.
Some rough edges? Kicad has a lot of rough edges, and some of the biggest have to do with footprint libraries & sharing, which is the key piece of momentum in this space. Meanwhile, that's something horizon does very, very well. I could see horizon overtaking kicad.
It looks like they focused more on a streamlined parts manager, which to be honest is a weak point with kicad. In kicad you need to manage the symbols, layout, and manufacturing info all separately.
Having tried Eagle and KiCad I am enthusiastic about any new free PCB design package, as it offers up the hope of a usable PCB design package. Eagle and KiCad are both UI disaster areas that make GIMP look usable.
Agreed. That's exactly why I've been using https://upverter.com Sure it's not as feature rich, but I found the interface much easier to get a hang of that for my small TTL and 6502 projects it's been great. I'd much rather put time contributing to the component library than dealing with a bad UI.
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Altium is probably the only clean PCB experience at the moment, and even that sits at 10% CPU on my machine with an empty schematic and no PCB open. The more esoteric tools like Mentor and Cadence's tools (and presumably Keysight's offerings although I can't get a student license through my university * ) are powerful but quite difficult to use working alone in the sense that schematic capture is quite slow because you need to (if I'm not doing something wrong) source your own library or make your own - not really competing with Kicad as such.
* The student license options these companies have are absolutely insane. You'd think they don't want people to learn to use their software. Altium's site doesn't work with non-american email addresses, Mentor doesn't include any RF/Thermal/Mixed-Signal simulation addons i.e. the only reason to learn to use it over kicad, Cadence took about 2 weeks to respond and ended up publishing a Photo of my student license with my name on their website if you know where to look (Indexed by number)
Electrical engineers are willing to put up with so much more it seems.
In general, IMHO. EAGLE, a golden-standard proprietary EDA tool, while still being quite a bit ahead of KiCad on the UX front, features no fewer pitfalls and completely unintuitive controls.
Although, like any other EDA, you really need to check the footprints or make your own.
I suggest trying DesignSpark PCB. It's not open source, and Windows-only (though I suspect it would run perfectly under Wine). But unlike Eagle, Kicad, gEDA, etc. it has a vaguely sane interface (it's still has a weird zoom though) and beginners can actually use it to design real PCBs.
If they’ve improved it I might give it a chance
Recent versions have an "Update PCB from schematic" option which works very well.
I feel like they work on the same principle as Adobe: pirate our software when you're learning, so you get used to it, then pay for it/ask your company to pay for it when you're working. I clearly remember one of the top Google recommended searches for "Altium" was "Altium full crack download"...
The concept of having split tools for schematic and pcb just doesn’t cut it any more. Nowadays most companies have transitioned or are transitioning to do layout inhouse, because modern products are so integrated that the “old ways”, doing sch inhouse and sending it to a company for layout has become very cumbersome.
IMO one of the key things for any new EDA package is making a wise choice on how to store their files. Being able to script stuff that works on your files is becoming a necessity, and packages like Altium can’t compete with that easily because they use binary files for the most important (sch and pcb). For me at least, storing info as textfiles is a must to consider a switch, because the biggest issue with Altium is how bad it interacts with tools like git.
but kicad at least has an approachable format. so I wrote some crappy tooling to at least generate symbol and layout from a single description. and I could theoretically write a front end and leverage things like Gerber generation.
I don't understand why we don't have vendor supplied footprints in a tool-neutral textual format yet. I know people have tried - who are the contenders?
Yes unfortunately the develops are not receptive to improving this. They feel that any attempt to make it more intuitive or easy to use is dumbing it down. Disappointing.
Is there work being done on the project that you feel should be prioritized below certain UI changes?
Cadence, Keysight, etc. provide the licenses to universities, not individual students, but they are pretty easy to get. Sounds like you need to work the channels through a professor.
The Keysight website doesn't actually have a list of universities in its software program so I didn't bother checking whether I could apply.
> You’ll never get those add-ons in a free package, as it takes institutional knowledge and full-time work to develop it, which cost $$.
Given the amount of malware (sorry - I mean license management) the software comes with its their own fault if a team of one student manages to design their own motherboard or similar. Realistically I just wanted to play with some CAD software.
> provide the licenses to universities,
Not for free usually.
I gave this a spin, and it's so refreshingly the opposite of that.
My main barrier to using it for my next project is this - am I going to get 100 hours into a project then hit a brick wall and have to port back over to KiCAD. If I had some confidence around this I think it'd give it a shot.
A gallery on the website of projects completed with it would probably do the trick.
Seriously pleased this project is a thing. In 2020 there isn't really an excuse to be using software with such a poor UI/UX as KiCAD
That said, I am very happy to see new entrants, like Horizon. I watched a presentation by the author in the 2018 FOSDEM and it looked like a great idea even back then, I'm going to try it for my next project to see how it has progressed.
Wayne Stambaugh, the KiCAD project lead, was in that presentation, and they're very much aware of the problems KiCAD has. They're working in that direction, as KiCAD 5 no longer requires you to export/import the netlist, I believe (I'm not sure because I reflexively always do it anyway).
One of the first questions they had towards the Horizon developer was "why make a new tool instead of contributing to KiCAD?", and the answer, IIRC, was "It was easier to make my own", which sounds reasonable given the amount of innovation that went into Horizon and the constraints a project as widespread as KiCAD would have, regarding backwards compatibility etc.
An easy starting point is better import/export of layouts. Designing an antenna in my RF-specific CAD suite is great, but when I actually have to build the thing, all I get is DXFs. Converting DXF to gerbers is a mess in KiCAD. Same goes if I want to reverse the pipe and simulate my layout.
Staying in the OSS realm, QUCS (open source ADS equivalent) has RF circuit simulation, just needs some help implementing auto-layout. This would make it trivial to e.g. optimize a simple transmission line circuit, and have it fabbed. That'd be huge for opening up simple microwave circuits to the DIY/"hacker" community.
The Microwave Office guys knew this 25 years ago, which is why it’s so much better than ADS. It is all tightly integrated and object oriented.
Starting from scratch also allowed me to trivially implement features that KiCad is missing, such as proper panelisation: https://blog.horizon-eda.org/progress/2020/04/05/progress-20...
Differential pair routing
Pin swapping... ie a differential pair where the pins can be reversed
Pin agnostic routing, ie a MCU or FPGA where it doesn't matter which pin is used
Incremental part placement, unlike kicad where all the footprints get dumped on the board in a big mess at the start
These are things that bother me most in kicad (it does have diff pair routing)
Thanks - looking forward to taking it for a spin
Yes, uses KiCad's push&shove router
> Pin swapping... ie a differential pair where the pins can be reversed
Not really, but swapping P/N in a diffpair is as easy as selecting nets in the schematic and using the "swap nets" tools.
> Pin agnostic routing, ie a MCU or FPGA where it doesn't matter which pin is used
Not really, but you can draw the connections in the board editor and backannotate them into the schematic: https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/backannotation....
> Incremental part placement, unlike kicad where all the footprints get dumped on the board in a big mess at the start
Yes, there's list showing all currently unplaced packages: https://imgur.com/ZrvRw46
As far as I can tell, the development models also differ significantly: The LibrePCB devs seem to be focused on doing things the right way the first time such as having a proper operation-based undo/redo stack whereas horizon just stores a copy of the whole schematic/board for undo/redo. They also seem to focus more on simplicity for beginners rather than more advanced features such as length tuning and advanced design rules.
Putting development effort where I like enabled me do to the board for my master thesis https://github.com/carrotIndustries/x-band-tx/ (4 Layers, differential pairs, length-matched traces) in Horizon EDA only after about 2 years after the initial beginning of development.
1. Does the schematic editor support multi-page schematics? Kicad's hierarchical-block approach always feels needlessly clunky to me.
2. Does the PCB editor support planes and copper pours?
3. Does the PCB editor have anything to help estimate a line/diffpair's characteristic impedance?
2. yes, including global or per-net rules for thermal relief, spacing etc. It warns you if nets have not been recalculated on Fabrication output. Adding them is simply: draw a polygon, right-click and "Add Plane", there you have to select any names net.
3. there is length tuning built in, but quite frankly I never had to use it, so I don't know if that is what you're looking for
1. Does Horizon support an equivalent to the 'Variant Manager?' This is something that will allow variance of build outputs (different component populations, different schematic text, etc).
2. In the docs it seems to mention submitting parts to the default pool. If people submit parts to the pool are there style guides somewhere? (line widths, US vs EU resistor symbols, etc)
3. Looking at a random SMD footprint (SOT-363) it looks like the paste window is equal to the pads. Is there a way to set paste mask expansion like is done in Altium? (Automatically offset paste window from pad by some amount)
No, but there's been some discussion on it: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon/pull/347#issuecomment...
> 2. In the docs it seems to mention submitting parts to the default pool. If people submit parts to the pool are there style guides somewhere?
There's https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon-pool-convention, but that's still work in progress.
> 3. Is there a way to set paste mask expansion like is done in Altium?
Yes, you can set it globally in the board.
[edit]: forgot to mention installation. On ubuntu, this was not exactly straightforward. Choice between installing a binary through flatpak (non-standard thing I don't have) or building from scratch (there went 30mn of my day). Almost made me open the windows laptop that's specifically reserved for running win-only crapware.
- Navigation Buttons: I proposed a solution here: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon/issues/119#issuecomme... This is part of the effort to add icons and toolbars to things that right now are reachable behind the spacebar menu
- Many TH (as well as audio/synthesizer-related) parts can be found in the work branch of my fork of the offical pool: https://github.com/atoav/horizon-pool/tree/work The offical library/pool only includes parts that have been checked by four eyes, so many parts are still open as Pull requests: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon-pool/pulls
As for the other points:
- on 1: Starting projects: for me it is only entering a project title and selecting a path, which is reasonable unless you are the type who wants to decide things like these in the end on saving.
- on 2: While I also like single window concepts better (with panes like Blender), I think having schematic, board and pool/library editors in seperate windows is kinda reasonable.
- on 4: You actually can. You are not forced to use existing parts if you use "Place component"
- on 6: Given how the whole thing works, such a thing like "Part properties" doesn't really make sense. In Horizon everything you place on the schematic is either a generic unit (E.g. "Two-terminal resistor") where you can enter a value or a existing part mapped to this generic unit (e.g. a "ERJ-6ENF2003"). This is (on purpose) different from how other EDA-tools do it, but in practise it works quite well. The point on the different assign window is something I'd like to have changed as well : )
- on 8: if you want to move something you have to use the move tool which you invoke by pressing the m key. You can also move things with the arrow keys.
Generally the UX paradigm of horizon is very much built around single key shortcuts or key sequences. And if you don't know the keys just press the spacebar and search for the command and it will tell you right there.
As for now the experience for power users is very fluid, but when it comes to installation, onboarding etc. the whole thing could use a lot of improvement (and are gladly beeing worked on).
Glib::Error: No GL implementation is available.
Couldn't find much to help me out figure out how to fix that issue, I assume it's some missing dependency but... where do I go from here?
Any plans for Mac downloads? And also, does its component model separate out schematic symbols and pin assignment (like DesignSpark PCB and I assume others) or are they inseparable (like KicadPCB)?
This is a good summery (with a nice graphic of the structure of an example part): https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pool-why.html
When producing a placement file for a PCB, can component part numbers be exported ? Neither Cadence, nor KiCAD stores components in their PCB files, only footprints, so part numbers cannot be easily accessed.
Why should I learn Horizon vs Kicad first, or vise versa?
- library management that makes sense (though is a bit more complex than KiCad's)
- clean and modern UI
- fast-paced development (if there's a suggestion, that makes sense to me, I'll implement it)
pro KiCad:
- large library of parts
- has been around for a long time, so for every problem you may encounter, there's likely a forum post or so that describes a solution/workaround
- larger community
Is there any "data first" EDA package? Something more "docbook" and less "Microsoft Word"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErQYI2A36M
https://github.com/xesscorp/skidl
http://www.geda-project.org/
Horizon docs have this explanation: https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/why-another-eda...
Horizon misses nothing (for me) now and has a beautifully efficent UX compared to Eagle and KiCAD. Their library concept is also well thought through, so I don't have the feeling I am wasting my time when I am contributing parts.
The downsides are:
- you still have to create many parts yourself (but parts, packages, etc are json and generating them can help a lot)
- horizon supports only newer OpenGL versions, so if your machine is old it might not run
Other than that I'd take it over all the others every day (and I do).
I'll have to find a simple project to test this out on though, because as you say, It needs to be a huge improvement on KiCad to warrant a switch.