KiCad is our favourite ECAD tool to use for a variety of reasons: It’s Open-Source meaning that the software is ever evolving gaining new and interesting features every single day It has awesome features – 3D viewer, controlled impedance PCB routing, up to 32 PCB layers, intuitive interface It’s completely free to use! This means if a customer wants to make modifications down the line it is as simple as downloading KiCad, installing it and opening the design files. If our customers have no EDA preference, then here at Milliamp we strongly suggest a conversion to our preferred ECAD tool – KiCad – which is also open source ! Whilst this isn’t a problem for Milliamp, where we are able to work with a wide variety of ECAD software suites, it can cause problems down the line in terms of our customers ability to view/modify the design themselves or other 3rd parties due to the high cost of EDA tools (can run into tens of thousands of UK pounds, with cut down versions “pin limited”).
When this does happen, sometimes the already completed design work has been completed in an schematic/PCB layout (ECAD) tools such as Altium, OrCad, Proteus or one of the many other ECAD software packages on the market.
Often here at Milliamp we are sent PCB design projects from customers wishing to modify their existing designs or continue work on a project that’s part way through completion.
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