[sdiy] Pulsonix PCB design software

[sleepy_dog at gmx.de]

epk wrote:
> fwiw, I first used Eagle, then tried diptrace which was worlds easier, 
> then learned Kicad with the help of a friend. I got frustrated with 
> the updates breaking things and the issues with defining paths, so 
> went back to diptrace for a couple projects. Diptrace is really nice 
> but ultimately there were more tedious workflow issues and getting 
> things done was simply slower.

- Diptrace -
Yeah. I am using diptrace for some time now. Most aspects of how it work 
seem quite sensible and consistent, and all the little things at least 
do things smart enough to not cause unnecessary clicking etc.
But there are parts where I thought, WTF do they do it that way.
It get's on my nerves that they make a distinction between "a selected 
item" and a "group of items". Aaaargh, 1 item is a group of size 1, you 
fools!
If I select a bunch of items, and want to do something to them that all 
of them support, I have to click "do X with selected items", if I click 
the regular command, it does that only to one of all the selected. To 
which one of them? Beats me. It can be inferred that I want to do things 
to more than one item - which is why I bloody selected them. Insanity!
The copper pour sometimes does really funny things which need working 
around... (sometimes fixable by altering settings)

Could you mention what kinds of things cause more tedious work in 
Diptrace for you?
I'm quite sure I encountered them as well, but I'd like to know exactly, 
to have a better idea of the other things and programs you yell me about.


> The push'n'shove routing feature saves so much time that it alone 
> outweighs the other inadequacies.

This is one thing that really made me curious, yes. Outweighing the 
other things... Well I can't tell for sure. Probably because I have not 
done boards with lots of parallel digital stuff, I guess :-D


>
> The zooming is a bit strange at first but now I almost never use 
> scrollbars. You don't have to move your mouse to/from the scrollbars 
> to navigate, just point where you want to see and zoom in/out...it 
> becomes fast.

I hardly ever use scroll bars e.g. in diptrace. I use zoom all the time.
But the way it works in the latest (from days ago) "stable" windows 
build of KiCad, it's broken. It makes the damn mouse cursor jump to the 
center if you dare to position it elsewhere to zoom *there*. It's like 
it hits you in your face, again and again and again. Not acceptable.


>
> Keyboard integration is really good so mousing can be minimal. User 
> definable single keystroke key commands speed things up too.
Well, is that not true of diptrace, too? What of the most frequent 
actions can't you do with key shortcuts instead menu entries?
If a program forces you to memorize keys for practically everything, 
OTOH, that's not something you can sell me as a plus.


>
> The file formats are not only free from being locked into a vendor but 
> they are human readable AND editable natively. You can 
> search/paste/replace in a text editor, then save and reopen without 
> doing any file conversions.

That's not necessarily good. Binary files can make sense. Text files can 
get large. Program needs more disk access.
But I *might* like it, if it stays in reasonable bounds.
I'd probably try how well those text files work with source control 
(versioning). Should be well compressible to keep the repo at sane size.


>
> There are a lot of us that are happily using kicad!

I also know people who (claim to) happily use MS Visio (>= 2013) :-D