
LibrePCB 0.1.4 Released - rnestler
https://librepcb.org/blog/2020-05-03_release_0.1.4/
======
Confiks
I was looking for a comparison with other tools, and "LibrePCB vs. KiCad" in
"comparison with other EDA tools" [1] gave some good measure:

"Although LibrePCB has many cool advantages, KiCad is (currently) much more
powerful. It has an amazing amount of features which allow to design very
complex PCBs. LibrePCB is still a very young software and thus lacks many
features needed to design complex PCBs."

"So, if you are looking for an intuitive EDA tool to quickly design a simple
PCB, you should give LibrePCB a try. But if you want to design complex PCBs,
LibrePCB is probably not (yet) the tool you are looking for."

[1] [https://librepcb.org/compare/](https://librepcb.org/compare/)

~~~
atoav
Just make sure to check out horizon-eda as well: [https://horizon-
eda.org/](https://horizon-eda.org/)

My goto eda tool these days, the whole way it behaves in UI and how the
library is structured is just cool.

~~~
donquichotte
Their distribution method for Ubuntu is a bit unfortunate, I'm not sure I will
install another package manager (flatpak?), give it root access, and then
trust an unknown source (flathub?) just to try a software.

~~~
atoav
I thought there was a debian build, however feel free to post sth to in the
github issues, I did so quite a few times already and at times the issue I had
was fixed within 24 hours.

------
dbrgn
Here's a video from FOSDEM where Urban (the main author) explains why he
started LibrePCB and how the library concepts are different from other similar
tools like KiCAD:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34)
(Slides:
[https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/](https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/))

Also, previous HN threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21676027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21676027)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569969)

------
donquichotte
I have played with LibrePCB before and the user experience is excellent. The
file format is also interesting, a lisp-style, human readable text file that
can be version-controlled and in some cases compared against other schematics.
I also suspect that generating netlists from code (similar to SKIDL for KiCAD)
would be quite doable.

My main issue were libraries, even though making footprints is easy enough. Is
there a way to import the KiCAD standard library with footprints and symbols
here? It would be amazing to have a large, CAD-agnostic component library!

------
baybal2
I think all those open source EDAs need to work on a shared parts library
format, online or offline.

Hunting for libraries online takes a lot of efforts.

Embeetle devs once talked of building an online parts library, but I haven't
heard of anything coming out of that

~~~
rnestler
A common parts library supported by multiple EDAs would be nice indeed. But
its pretty hard to pull of, since the library organization and styles are
quite different between these.

I mean: Importing / exporting the geometry data of footprints and symbols
shouldn't be too hard. But one also needs to find a common set of categories,
tags, relations between the parts, etc. Otherwise one will end up with a huge
library which is impossible to navigate.

Also I would be afraid to just create yet another format which will lead to
even more fragmentation.

------
jszymborski
I'm an initiate to designing PCBs (and amateur electronics in general). I've
been having a great time with KiCad, and would love to know what more seasoned
pros would say would be the major difference between KiCad, Eagle, and
LibrePCB in a practical sense.

~~~
canadaduane
I've used KiCad quite a bit, and enjoy it, but there is an unnecessarily steep
learning curve--for example, a good experience depends largely on memorizing
key shortcuts. There are also some really unintuitive things related to
component libraries (footprints, 3D CAD representations, and schematics) that
is kind of a holdover from its "every module does one thing and does one thing
well" roots. They've made improvements of late, but it still isn't what I'd
call intuitive. I think the future is a more integrated workflow, and I
believe that's what I'm seeing in LibrePCB. That said, it's a younger project,
and doesn't match up feature for feature yet. I'm thinking about giving
LibrePCB a try for tinker projects, and if that goes well, maybe I'll try
something bigger :)

