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karotte

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FreeCAD 5 months ago

If you want a solvespace with chamfers and fillets, then give Dune 3D a try.

Disclaimer: Dune 3D developer here.

FreeCAD 5 months ago

Dune 3D developer here. Use inkscape to convert the SVG path to DXF and import that.

LibrePCB 0.1.7 4 years ago

Horizon EDA developer here. More than enough, everything's there for small to medium-sized projects.

1. Does Horizon support an equivalent to the 'Variant Manager?'

No, but there's been some discussion on it: https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon/pull/347#issuecomment...

2. In the docs it seems to mention submitting parts to the default pool. If people submit parts to the pool are there style guides somewhere?

There's https://github.com/horizon-eda/horizon-pool-convention, but that's still work in progress.

3. Is there a way to set paste mask expansion like is done in Altium?

Yes, you can set it globally in the board.

I only got to know about LibrePCB at the end of 2016 after several months of development on Horizon EDA. While there are some similarities such as the use of UUIDs and strong link between schematic and netlist, there are major architectural differences such as Horizon EDA using raw OpenGL vs QTSceneGraph(?) and Gtkmm vs QT.

As far as I can tell, the development models also differ significantly: The LibrePCB devs seem to be focused on doing things the right way the first time such as having a proper operation-based undo/redo stack whereas horizon just stores a copy of the whole schematic/board for undo/redo. They also seem to focus more on simplicity for beginners rather than more advanced features such as length tuning and advanced design rules.

Putting development effort where I like enabled me do to the board for my master thesis https://github.com/carrotIndustries/x-band-tx/ (4 Layers, differential pairs, length-matched traces) in Horizon EDA only after about 2 years after the initial beginning of development.

Differential pair routing

Yes, uses KiCad's push&shove router

Pin swapping... ie a differential pair where the pins can be reversed

Not really, but swapping P/N in a diffpair is as easy as selecting nets in the schematic and using the "swap nets" tools.

Pin agnostic routing, ie a MCU or FPGA where it doesn't matter which pin is used

Not really, but you can draw the connections in the board editor and backannotate them into the schematic: https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/backannotation....

Incremental part placement, unlike kicad where all the footprints get dumped on the board in a big mess at the start

Yes, there's list showing all currently unplaced packages: https://imgur.com/ZrvRw46

pro Horizon:

- library management that makes sense (though is a bit more complex than KiCad's)

- clean and modern UI

- fast-paced development (if there's a suggestion, that makes sense to me, I'll implement it)

pro KiCad:

- large library of parts

- has been around for a long time, so for every problem you may encounter, there's likely a forum post or so that describes a solution/workaround

- larger community

As written in https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/why-another-eda... changing the way how a PCB design tool handles libraries would certainly require a complete rewrite as the library structure permeates the entire codebase.

Starting from scratch also allowed me to trivially implement features that KiCad is missing, such as proper panelisation: https://blog.horizon-eda.org/progress/2020/04/05/progress-20...