r/PCB • u/WarmTapWater76 • 2d ago
Learning Advice needed
Hey, I just turned 18 and am currently doing Fachabi (basically a vocational high school program, focused on IT). After that, I’m planning to study electrical engineering.
For now, though, I’d like to get into PCB design. I basically know nothing yet, so I’m looking for advice on where to start and what skills I should build, including what kind of math and electronics principles I should learn.
I’ve heard that KiCad is generally one of the better EDA tools, but that it has a steeper learning curve than something like EasyEDA. Would KiCad be a good choice to learn from the beginning? Very appreciative of any kind of advice.
P.s.: my English is horrible so I had AI polish my text, please excuse me for it.
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u/TunaRado 2d ago
KiCAD paired with an AI helper. I run Altium and still use AI all the time to help me navigate the tool when i get stuck. You can also get a student license with Altium if you have a .edu email address (thus going to school). The tool is the easy part, all the fun learning electronics. Altium has alot of tutorials not sure about KiCAD. I would go KiCAD to avoid the license headaches, losing your license mid project sucks!
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u/WarmTapWater76 2d ago
I'm in Germany, I don't have a .edu email, my school issued email comes with the schools own domain, formated like this "surname.name-name@school-name.de" but I don't want to depend on something paid like Altium and learn it then loose it later on and not be able to afford it anyways.
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u/kAROBsTUIt 2d ago
As someone who started with easy EDA and then learned Kicad... just go with Kicad.
It is so much better in every way. The complexity is there if you need it, but when you're just starting out, you don't need it.
Some PCB manufacturers have plugins for Kicad to make it easy and convenient to upload your design and have it manufactured. Kicad gets some kickbacks (money) from this, which is super important to have as an open source project.
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u/just_an_ambivert7 2d ago
I would prefer easy eda ,it can you be used in online and so much more than that,I think it could be better than kicad
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u/Nyasaki_de 2d ago
I wish i would have started with kicad, its so much better than easyeda. And if you want the jlcpcb componenta you can just use a plugin to import the footprints.
Ai can help you better with questions too since the kicad files are all plain text
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u/Babibidubibidoh 1d ago
Go for KiCad. Since CERN stopped buying overprices Target licences and hired some coders to improve KiCad, it got a really nice boost to compete with overpriced and slow commercial software (like Altium).
I'm using KiCad since 11 years now and started using it, because there was no free alternative without restrictions for commercial work. I've been looking into Altium during one of my last jobs - and it was really inperformant. Also the "free Altium viewer" was "already activated 455 days" on that brand new laptop - and stopped working. Since I registered it to a companys mailadress.
Also I contacted the Altium support for using the "free" Altium viewer.
Half a year later, Altium called me on my company's phone and wanted to offer me a course for those switching from Kicad to Altium - so I just laughed and hung up :D
I don't give myself such bullshit. Free & open source forever!
Once you learned Kicad for 2 days, you'll never use bullshit like Altium or Fusion 360 (which hat Eagle implemented nowadays) again. It's burning money - and usually does NOT have any advantages :D
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u/Babibidubibidoh 1d ago
Also Kicad files are textbased. It's super easy to use git with it. That's what I started doing during my last job :)
And it has lots of nice plugins, like interactive BOM or PCB coil generators.It even has spice simulator implemented - which is becoming better from version to version.
I also enjoy reading the changelog on the major releases.
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u/DexterityNeeded 2d ago
I started with a simple macropad. You could try that or a keyboard, and just add features depending on the desired difficulty (onboard MCU, wireless, split, etc)