KiCad V7 release announced

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JonSnell Electronic said:
7.42GB it is a busy programme!
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And probably runs just as sluggish (if not even more sluggish) on my ancient ThinkPad. That's why I resurrected the good old EAGLE 5.9, which runs just fine under WINE on Devuan, and somewhat decided to stick with it a little longer now. It doesn't do BGA escape routing, but so do I :p!

I think KiCad is pretty nice in itself, once you get the hang of it and get used to its quirks, but it's huge and demanding. I won't call it bloated, but I'm not willing to keep up with it hardware-wise any more. It runs just fine on my i5, but EAGLE does so as well. No need for me to get a new laptop, just to keep working on that board design while sitting on the couch.

:2c:
 
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I have been using Eagle since the DOS based version 2.something in the early 1990's. Eagle has changed ownership twice since then. The "pro version" would be required to make the large PC boards I design for vacuum tube amps. I have developed a large library of parts for those designs, so I will continue to use Eagle 5.11 (the latest Cadsoft version) for as long as it will run on my PC's for all vacuum tube work, and some other stuff that I have libraries for.

I decided to go with KiCad for modern SMD and other small PC boards since Eagle 5.11 and older will not read any of the libraries from Eagle 6.x or newer. I had KiCad 6.something on my PC and had just downloaded 7.00 when that PC died. I just finished building a low cost Ryzen 7 PC with a CPU recycled from a PC that got a Ryzen 9 chip. The R7 is considerably more powerful than the 7th gen Intel system that died.

KiCad is supposed to be able to translate Eagle files, but it won't eat my old Eagle stuff.

I am in the process of loading a long list of software onto the new PC mostly in alphabetical order and I just got to "Eagle." I still have the original disk and license key from 2008, and the receipt shows that I paid $307 for it and that was for an upgrade from version 4.

I'll get to KiCad a bit later as it's further down the list. I have a project started on the other PC in KiCad 7.00. I simply pulled the 10 TB data drive from the dead machine and put it into this one so that everything I have ever done on a Windows box follows me to my next machine. Data usually transfers well, but applications don't as they are usually machine specific.
 

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Tubelab_com

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Despite being written during the Windows XP days, Eagle 5.11 seems to run fine on Windows 11. I use a $299 Walmart 43 inch 4K TV set for a monitor since it is the best compromise for 70 year old eyes and a limited budget. It is as sharp or sharper than the 27 inch Acer monitor next to it. Still need glasses to read the fine print though.

I'll get to KiCad later this afternoon.
 

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Yes, the screen can not be too big for EAGLE. I think that's due to it not having anti-aliasing. You have to zoom in pretty much to be able to read any of the labels, but by then you've lost the 'bigger picture', since there are now only a couple of parts visible on the screen. Still a pretty reliable piece of software, that 5.x from Cadsoft. Didn't try anything newer than that, and probably never will. My educational version is limited to 160x100mm board area and for non-commercial projects only, but basically was the only option for me as an apprentice back then. Must have been around 150 bucks, if I remember correctly.
 
tomchr

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I tried Eagle a million years ago. Ok, so maybe only 20 years ago. It was clear that it was a program written for DOS that had been ported to Windoze. I never got over the hotkey assignments with the function keys randomly assigned to functions. Or maybe they were alphabetically assigned, in German, or something. It was awful. Even though the OrCAD 9.3 I had access to at the time was in no way intuitive to work with it was still way ahead of Eagle. I never looked at Eagle again. I'm sure lots have happened since then, but the subscription licensing model kills it for me. The trial version is pretty limited.

I tried KiCAD 5 and found it pretty awful as well. It was very capable, but the UI was very 1990s Solaris in its way of operating. The UI in KiCAD 6 was completely redone and what a difference. It's nice, modern, and intuitive to use. It does everything I need it to do and then some. And it's free. I'll make a yearly donation as it's actually worth using.

I do get that if you're already using something else and like it you might as well stick with it. I went with KiCAD because the software I was using was horribly outdated and I couldn't justify the subscriptions of Eagle, Altium, OrCAD.

Tom
 
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