[Discuss] Improvements in KiCad

[Javier Serrano]

Dear all,

Our section at CERN is mostly concerned with the development of
electronic boards and their low-level software support. We identified
some time ago the lack of high-quality free/open-source design tools as
one of the few remaining obstacles to free sharing of our hardware
designs. We then decided to start contributing to Icarus Verilog and
KiCad [1], which cover HDL simulation and PCB design.

Regarding KiCad, after quite a lot of ground work, one of my colleagues
announced yesterday the release of a new interactive router [2] which
will boost the productivity of designers laying out relatively complex
PCBs.

There is still some work to be done in KiCad regarding seamless
installation of the latest versions, but there are some good
instructions on the web [3] to build KiCad from source.

For those who would just like to see what this interactive router looks
like, we prepared a simple tutorial video [4].

If you also think that good FOSS tools are vital for OSHW and would like
to help us, please contact me off list. We are particularly interested
in user experience reports telling us how KiCad could become easier to
use, or key features which are missing in the current official roadmap [5].

Cheers,

Javier

[1] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki
[2] https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg13387.html
[3] http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/KICAD/Download
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCG4daPvuVI
[5]
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/product/view/head:/Documentation/development/road-map.md