
LibrePCB: First release candidate - dbrgn
https://librepcb.org/blog/2018-10-21_release_0.1.0-rc1/
======
atoav
It is very cool to see that lately there are some conceptually different
counterparts to KiCad out there.

I stumbled uppon LibrePCB at least a year ago, I can't wait to test it.
Currently I am totally hooked on Horizon EDA (see:
[https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon/wiki/Feature-
ove...](https://github.com/carrotIndustries/horizon/wiki/Feature-overview))
which has a especially cool library managment IMO. I am curious how LibrePCB
changed over that period

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aidenn0
Can anyone comment on how this compares to KiCad? That's been the best open
source EDA tool for me so far.

~~~
dbrgn
U. Bruhin (the primary author of LibrePCB) answered this question on Reddit
([https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9q4j1n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9q4j1n/librepcb_first_release_candidate_is_out_ama/)):

\---Quote:---

Hi! LibrePCB has some very new concepts, especially for library management.
You should take a look at my talk at FOSDEM:
[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/attachments/slides/2267/export/events/attachments/cad_librepcb/slides/2267/librepcb_slides.pdf))

As these are extremely different to KiCad's concepts, it would be very
difficult to contribute that to KiCad because they need to provide backward
compatibility. And KiCad already has a _lot_ of legacy code, so it would
become even worse when changing very fundamental concepts. It's very
questionable if KiCad developers even would accept such fundamental changes -
actually I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't agree with some of LibrePCB's
concepts. So the only way was to create a completely new project.

And LibrePCB 0.1.0 is only the beginning - I have many more ideas how an EDA
tool should look like. With a standalone project I'm much more flexible to
implement new features than if every feature would need to be contributed to
KiCad.

------
dbrgn
LibrePCB is a free EDA software to develop printed circuit boards. The focus
is on a good library format and on ease of use. This first stable release
candidate is the result of about five years of work!

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di1eep
I have been following this project on GitHub. Good to see that it's moving
forward.

