@vertigo I fell in the gap of learning to design on paper when I was young. Now I'm working with things at both a small scale and level of repeatability that it probably justifies it.
Most of the EE folks I know push me toward Eagle, etc. but I want to stick to open tools that I can run off-line, so I think KiCAD is the best choice all things considered.
I'm not designing anything super complex, just more than I want to deal with on a perfboard (x8+ times :) )
@jjg I'm just saying I found KiCAD to be hard to learn. Not saying it's inappropriate for the job!
Quite the contrary, KiCAD has been used for some impressively sophisticated projects.
@ekaitz_zarraga @vertigo I’ll look for that (let me know if you have a direct link :) )
@jjg I haven't gotten far enough to actually do schematic capture with KiCAD. I mean, beyond placing parts that it already has in its library. Trying to, e.g., place a custom component (like an FPGA chip, for example) was the deal breaker for me. I just couldn't figure it out.
Also, I had intense difficulty going from schematic to PCB layout.
Ultimately, this is a Vi-vs-Emacs issue for me, I think. KiCAD: I *just* can't wrap my head around it. gEDA: I hate it, but I'm productive with it.
@vertigo I'm all about using whatever tool if you can create something cool with it :)
I had been leaning toward #kicad because I heard more about it but I wasn't aware of geda. Maybe I should look into that as well?
Mostly I just want whatever is the quickest way to get this board designed so I can order some made and see what I screwed up sooner 😂
@jjg It takes more than a day, in my experience. I'm still blissfully ignorant of KiCAD, even after two weeks of trying.
Maybe some day, I'll try again.