true, why is blender special? it was originally a closed source program with a small community that became open source later, but it’s evolved massively since then and become much more polished and easier to use, which virtually no open source project can say
KiCAD is another package that I think is fairly competitive at this point. It’s not going to kill Altium, but it’s improved greatly in the last 3 years.
I actually disagree and think Altium will, in fact, be Victim #001 of KiCad. The question becomes: "Is Altium <n> thousand dollars better than KiCad?" And a lot of the time the answer will now be "No."
I already split my designs about 50/50 between Altium and KiCad--and that's before KiCad 6.0 which is imminent (6.0RC2 exists right now).
1) KiCad has one killer feature: it's cross platform.
I would argue that this will, over time, kill anything that isn't. Mostly because "open a VM in the cloud and do all your work there" is becoming really common.
2) PCB software, by and large, doesn't need new features. PCB software does need features that work.
Altium is infuriating with not killing bugs and introducing new ones every release.
3) Altium and bunch are basically blocking access to libraries without a subscription fee. That's going to erase Altium for use by small people. This drives me up a tree because it prevents me from sharing a design.
KiCad will slowly but surely eat everything at the bottom and then start upwards--there's just simply no other decent alternative in the space.
Not having linux support is a big self-own for Altium. Its main high-end competitor, Cadence OrCAD/Allegro, has top-tier Linux support. Altium tried to do a "365" thing like Microsoft, and I doubt that's really what Altium users want.
Altium was about to be a good high-end piece of software until they did this. Now it's homeless and it will lose to KiCAD for low-end things and Cadence for high-end.
To me, the self-own was trying to lock libraries behind subscription.
Altium had just gotten to the point that everybody providing chips was also providing an Altium library footprint and symbol.
It was really nice--for about 12-18 months.
And then I started getting Altium libraries that I couldn't pull the symbol out of and couldn't use without being logged in.
Fscking idiots. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
They had finally reached the point that they were an alternative to Orcad in commercial engagements, and then they gave it away in order to try to go after subscription revenue.
I literally picked up KiCad the day after I couldn't extract a symbol from an Altium library and add a couple of missing pins for a new part. I was that infuriated.
Right now, I'm evaluating KiCad 6.0 for work. I'll probably transfer over completely for personal projects (I've been doing more and more personal projects in KiCad over time with only PCB->Schematic back annotation holding me back from full transfer--that's fixed in 6.0 with the new file formats). It may take a bit, but I'll probably transfer over to KiCad for work projects that I'm the only designer on once I get a couple of projects under my belt with KiCad 6.0.
There is no design that I’ll ever do that KiCAD can’t handle. I get the sense that most of the commercial complex PCB (motherboards, phones, etc) are likely to stay Altium for a good long while. Is that not the case?
Those designs probably aren't in Altium. They're probably in something like Mentor Xpedition or Cadence Allegro.
This is why I suggest that Altium is likely to be the first victim.
The non-Altium proprietary systems have a lot of legacy to hold them in place (like parts database integration across your company). In addition, they do have some very advanced features around routing matched memory buses and the like.
If, however, your design doesn't need that, KiCad will cover you, and Altium won't bring anything you need to the table.
KiCad's library management isn't powerful enough for (most) commercial work. It has a good foundation but there is too much critical functionality that is not implemented yet.
I'm not sure if/how this is improved in KiCad 6 but from the KiCad 5 tutorials I've seen, "manually match symbols to footprints" was its approach to library management :/
I'm learning PCB design with https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon instead — and here library (pool) management comes first. You actually place full "parts" (that associate symbols and footprints and other metadata) onto schematics — and if you don't want to decide on a particular model number, you can still place a "base" part (e.g. "generic 5k resistor") and change it later. Oh, and the schematic editor actually edits nets, rather than what KiCad does (seemingly just a basic CAD drawing that gets analyzed into a netlist as a very separate explicit step).
1) I see its value. The cacophony needs to be tamed. And a larger company can dedicate staff to keeping the library up-to-date and organized.
But it's kind of like the problems between a monorepo and multiple repositories.
I've never been part of a company where we could afford to dedicate people to BOM management and library control. I know a really good person who does this--but the companies she works at move at a sclerotic pace. They're medical or aerospace. They have zillions of ISO certifications and testing requirements. You have to file 3 forms to put a new part in the "system". And this is fine--I want someone like her preventing random changes sneaking into a medical device, thanks.
And even still, she has to fight with people every day to hold back the chaos.
2) Everybody has a different notion of "library management" and someone else's version will always be an impediment.
"Library management" is, practically by definition, opinionated. Mine is too.
I have a very idiosyncratic way of parts numbering my resistors, capacitors, inductors and a few other things in the system. It's optimized for the fact that if you put things in boxes in order sorted by those numbers, I can browse through our inventory very quickly and pull parts, values, and footprints that I need as well as know if I don't have something or have a substitute. All without having to consult some master spreadsheet or database that will always be out of date.
It drives the aforementioned library organizer crazy. She wants me to use the "standard" parts numbers and classifications. However, she also acknowledges that I have a solid reason for what I chose. If I ever manage to hire her, I will let her at it and I will comply with what she wants.
> "manually match symbols to footprints" was its approach to library management :/
It is, but I also find that "footprint management" at the schematic simply isn't as useful as people make it out to be. "Generic" footprints are fine when you're throwing around DIP chips or 1206 components. However, footprints get a lot less "generic" and interchangeable when you're working with 0402 and smaller components.
A lot of my components wind up with "unique" footprints anyway.
