[chbot] Eagle layout

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On 26 February 2014 13:17, Volker Kuhlmann <list0570 at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> I can never make up my mind whether to start something with eagle or
> kicad.
May I suggest KiCad would be the better choice? :)

> eagle is far more common,
But if being common was a good reason to use something we'd all be
using Windows and <insert something else to bolster this argument
here>. :)

> more polished,
FWIW it's somewhat questionable if it's really that much more polished
when it gets down to use. I had an eye-opening experience when a
friend of mine who had use expensive pro-level EDA software a decade
ago tried to use Eagle, got frustrated and tried KiCad (with some
pushing from me :) ) and was surprised that it actually worked "as he
expected" even ignoring the FLOSS nature of it.

> kicad is FOSS,
And, if FOSS is important to an individual I think there's a strong
imperative to use a FOSS package in preference to a non-FOSS package
if there's not a *strong* argument in favour of using the non-FOSS
option. And from my impression of Eagle it's not clearly a winner
(personally I think the user experience of all EDA software sucks and
I'm still waiting for the day when I can use Inkscape for the task
instead :) ). And, for open hardware I think it's not really open
unless it's built using open tools (as much as "reasonably" possible).

> and gets better all the time.
And I think that's the key point. If you believe the FLOSS solution is
eventually going to get better why invest time and energy into
learning/integrating the non-FLOSS option if you're just going to have
to do that work all over again?

(And, let's face it, in a hobbyist context it's not like most designs
will really push the limits of KiCad.)

> Redrawing a component in kicad from an eagle part should not take too long.
There's also scripts that do an "automatic" conversion to various degrees.

> Fritzing isn't really that far advanced; its feature of making 3D
> visualisations of the breadboard is a gimmick
FWIW, the one thing I found Fritzing useful for was documenting a
breadboarded prototype with SparkFun breakout boards. :)

> None will do 3D visualisations of PCBs with components.
As mentioned elsewhere, AFAIK both Eagle & definitely KiCad can do 3D
visualisations.

--Philip;