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Horizon EDA is a much better tool than Kicad. It is extremely well written on a modern foundation and as a result it doesn’t need the giant list of bug fixes th

by twarge 3y ago

Horizon EDA is a much better tool than Kicad. It is extremely well written on a modern foundation and as a result it doesn’t need the giant list of bug fixes that kicad constantly receives. Library management is the most fundamental improvement over kicad. LibrePCB is also worthy of note and seems aimed at Eagle users. Also fundamentally more modern and solid than kicad.

imtringued 3y ago
I haven't used Kicad in years. I thought they improved significantly in that time span, while HorizonEDA was stagnating at it's admittedly very good level of quality. What I am missing from HorizonEDA is the ability to set constraints to signals/pads such as maximum and minimum current, voltage, frequency or setting impedance targets. There is also no easy way to do a simple static current FEM simulation on custom polygon shapes. You can already do this using a chain of four open source tools but it is a lot of manual steps.
- twarge 3y ago
  I am repelled by the notion that software requires a constant stream of tweaks to be healthy. If you look at the issues on GitHub, there are basically no open bugs there; it's all feature requests. You can set a net or net class to have a set of geometric constraints suitable for a particular impedance or current or voltage. This matches or surpasses the capability of every other EDA software that I've used. I also think it's unreasonable to ask EDA software for a full on FEM simulation. You wouldn't want to do that with the full board geometry anyhow.
atoav 3y ago
I am a long time user/contributer to horizon-eda. In fact I made their original landing page at https://horizon-eda.org https://horizon-eda.org and designed the logo. During that time I created roughly 10 finished (and working) projects using the software. The only downside compared to KiCAD is that the official parts library is smaller. But what is in there goes through a review process and is often verified by other builders. There are also fancy things like 3D views, length tuning, alternate footprints, board layouts consisting of multiple boards, ... If you are one of the people who has no problem creating their own footprints and always wanted to like KiCAD, but is driven insane by the UX, this one might be it.
- stavros 3y ago
  I know this is a bit of a useless comment, but doesn't only offering a Windows package prevent most people who want to use this from trying it? Horizon might be amazing, but if I can't run it on Linux, I've closed the tab.
  - Tryanasorus 3y ago
    [dead]
    - stavros 3y ago
      There's a Linux package?! Then it's a massive blunder that the "Download" button on the home page goes to the GitHub releases, where there's only a Windows installer.
  - atoav 3y ago
    Huh? There is a Debian package: https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html#debian-ubuntu https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.ht... I run it both on Windows and Linux and it works fine. The only thing it does not run on (as of now) is OSX, because of some GTK-issue, but once that is resolved there is no reason why it couldn't.
  - eqvinox 3y ago
    I think there's a misunderstanding there, Horizon EDA is available as a standard distro package; there's no "Linux package download" because there's no need for one (and creating packages as a 3rd party is a minefield.)
    - stavros 3y ago
      That makes sense, though the home page should definitely link to something that says that, instead of a single downloadable Windows installer.

by twarge 3y ago

imtringued 3y ago

I haven't used Kicad in years. I thought they improved significantly in that time span, while HorizonEDA was stagnating at it's admittedly very good level of quality. What I am missing from HorizonEDA is the ability to set constraints to signals/pads such as maximum and minimum current, voltage, frequency or setting impedance targets. There is also no easy way to do a simple static current FEM simulation on custom polygon shapes. You can already do this using a chain of four open source tools but it is a lot of manual steps.

twarge 3y ago
I am repelled by the notion that software requires a constant stream of tweaks to be healthy. If you look at the issues on GitHub, there are basically no open bugs there; it's all feature requests. You can set a net or net class to have a set of geometric constraints suitable for a particular impedance or current or voltage. This matches or surpasses the capability of every other EDA software that I've used. I also think it's unreasonable to ask EDA software for a full on FEM simulation. You wouldn't want to do that with the full board geometry anyhow.

atoav 3y ago

I am a long time user/contributer to horizon-eda. In fact I made their original landing page at https://horizon-eda.org https://horizon-eda.org and designed the logo. During that time I created roughly 10 finished (and working) projects using the software. The only downside compared to KiCAD is that the official parts library is smaller. But what is in there goes through a review process and is often verified by other builders. There are also fancy things like 3D views, length tuning, alternate footprints, board layouts consisting of multiple boards, ... If you are one of the people who has no problem creating their own footprints and always wanted to like KiCAD, but is driven insane by the UX, this one might be it.

stavros 3y ago
I know this is a bit of a useless comment, but doesn't only offering a Windows package prevent most people who want to use this from trying it? Horizon might be amazing, but if I can't run it on Linux, I've closed the tab.
- Tryanasorus 3y ago
  [dead]
  - stavros 3y ago
    There's a Linux package?! Then it's a massive blunder that the "Download" button on the home page goes to the GitHub releases, where there's only a Windows installer.
- atoav 3y ago
  Huh? There is a Debian package: https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html#debian-ubuntu https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.ht... I run it both on Windows and Linux and it works fine. The only thing it does not run on (as of now) is OSX, because of some GTK-issue, but once that is resolved there is no reason why it couldn't.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  I think there's a misunderstanding there, Horizon EDA is available as a standard distro package; there's no "Linux package download" because there's no need for one (and creating packages as a 3rd party is a minefield.)
  - stavros 3y ago
    That makes sense, though the home page should definitely link to something that says that, instead of a single downloadable Windows installer.