05-30, 11:10–11:50 (America/Los_Angeles), Theater
NCX has ripped off the bandage and moved from Altium to KiCAD. In this talk, I will discuss our decision and explain some tools we built to make it easier to deal with libraries from multiple sources. In addition, I demonstrate how we worked around quirks in the new JobSet feature to get consistent output files for manufacturing.
Over the last 35 years, I've used just about every PCB CAD tool in existence. As the first EE at NCX Corporation, I made the decision to purchase a license for Altium. I completely regret that decision. Over the last 15 years, the cost of Altium has gone up while the feature set has remained almost unchanged. In the same period, the service has gone from good, to bad, to completely unacceptable. This January, we moved to KiCAD and are not looking back. My goal is to give you the ammunition and confidence needed to convince your management to not give Altium one more shiny penny.
That said, KiCAD has some "out of the box" usability issues. I'll show a simple python script that helps manage the combination of the standard libraries, third party libraries and our internal libraries. The new Jobset feature has some teething issues. I'll show you our default jobset that works around the quirks to produce consistent output files with just a few clicks.
I am Physicts, Computer Scientist and Electrical Engineer without over 40 years of experince in computing. I have designed many dozens of circuit boards using nearly every CAD tool in the marketplace. I have designed telecommunications supercomputers, innovative touch sensors (including the machine vision system for the original Microsoft Surface), 3D TV's that don't require glasses, displays for virtual and augmented reality headsets, and a device that let's you drive a wheelchair with your eyes. These days I design custom hardware and software to manufacturure and control carbon nanotube based x-ray emitters. NCX's emitters are the first major enhancement to x-ray tubes in many decades.