KiCad is good now. That might seem like a flippant comment however it is indicative of the progress that KiCad has made in the last 3 years. I have moved from a firmly entrenched position with a proprietary EDA (which felt like a pair of comfortable shoes) to KiCad for the majority of projects.<p>To any KiCad dev reading this - thank you.
Wow, what a coincidence! Thank you for posting, this looks like a great resource.<p>I am (a very novice, no EE background hobbyist) creating my first design right now.<p>It seems like there are a lot of design rules that are not common knowledge. And in the electronics tinkering "community" there is basically a vertical wall in the learning curve after Arduino/breadboard. I work on embedded software for a living so I understand that side but some of the electrical stuff really doesn't have an easy learning curve.<p>I am following along with this video:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVUqaB0IMh4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVUqaB0IMh4</a><p>and having an OK time so far.<p>If anyone knows of any other resources I would love to know. And, is there a place, maybe a slack or discord, that would review designs? I really want to have someone look at it before it goes out but I have no clue where I would begin searching for someone to ask.
Howdy everyone - Fischer here, I started this course last year along with my good friend Adi. Glad to see that this ended up on HN, and glad that people are excited about it and seem to find the content useful. The goal of putting this together was to help people have fun and feel empowered to build cool stuff, and from the comments here it looks like it's helping that. Yay :)<p>A quick note though: We're updating the site right now to get it ready for it's second running in IAP 2024, which is in about a week or two. So most of the content for this year is being built out, but everything from last year is available under the archive page:<p><a href="https://pcb.mit.edu/archive/IAP2023/" rel="nofollow">https://pcb.mit.edu/archive/IAP2023/</a><p>Happy hacking!
I've spent my vacation making a nixie tube clock PCB. Just the last few traces left to route. I use altium at work and KiCAD at home. There are things I like about both. It really is enjoyable.
PCB Design is a broad "field." Depends on what you're building. I think people place too much of an emphasis on the tool you use instead of the skillsets you need. At the end of the day, in 99% of cases, we're integrating highly complex, yet modular systems built by semiconductor companies.<p>Expand your design capabilities by understanding these semiconductor black boxes that are available to you in your field (power electronics, audio, RF, etc.) As another user mentioned, read up on design references! And datasheet graphs, and try to get your hands on closely related previous designs. As EEs, we should talk more about design patterns and primitives like software engineers see it.<p>But of course, I understand why there's a big discussion about tooling, it's like picking the first language to start programming in. Imo, if you're starting out in PCB design, pick a tool that doesn't get in the way with your learning; something simple but also capable when you progress. The software engineering choice would be python, and I think flux.ai is the closest thing we get to that. But still, if you learn one, you can use the rest! We're all constrained by a pretty standardized manufacturing process so the functions you perform in all these tools will be very similar.
Indirectly related question, I’m thinking about starting into PCBs, have downloaded KiCAD and started playing around. But I’m not super psyched to etch my own boards (although I understand it’s gotten easier over the last 30 years), and have been thinking about getting a PCB CNC. Any thoughts on best way to take your designs and make them real?
Courses like this is what makes me keep going, I’m pretty new to EE and PCB design so the learning curve is somewhat difficult since I have to look up for resources everywhere for the specific things I want to make. I tried KiCad at first but ended up using Flux as my main design tool because of two things: If I’m stuck on something, instead of having to google the answers and accommodate their context with mine, I instead ask their AI which already has the context of my project.
And second one is that there is such a strong sense of community and collaboration, it makes me feel like I never have to do anything alone. I mean the whole library is made by other people (as far as I know)
I know I won’t have to Google everything at a later point but for now it’s what works for me.
Hey there it's Winnie. Thanks for all the helpful guides everyone posted! They all seem quite interesting and it makes writing lecture plans and teaching our students much easier :)<p>As mentioned on our website, we'll be putting up our content as we complete them. By the end of January of next year there should be a complete set of lecture recordings, lecture notes, labs, and assignments updated for 2024.
They don't include this book in their reference books list but this is an excellent book on PCB design.<p>[1] Bogatin's Practical Guide to Prototype Breadboard and PCB Design:<p><a href="https://us.artechhouse.com/Bogatins-Practical-Guide-to-Prototype-Breadboard-and-PCB-Design-P2206.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://us.artechhouse.com/Bogatins-Practical-Guide-to-Proto...</a>
I haven't touched PCB design/EDA since college because it was so cost prohibitive and I lost the student license to Mentor Graphics, but it's something I've always wanted to return to. I am excited to try this out!