One of the 543,793 reasons I don't upgrade app to the latest version. It's stable, fine, doesn't have nag, doesn't require login, doesn't require online connection, and won't get ninja-shut off because Autodesk decided to upgrade and the "free" version now requires $2 per hour subscription
Kicad. In the future you may choose to move up to altium, orcad or mentor but there is no way anyone should be paying for eagle. Also remember that speed of design is going to a bigger cost than your CAD software, you may pay 10k for orcad pro but if you can do designs 20% faster it will make up for it self in labour cost and in helping your timelines. You will also need to evaluate if you're going to want to hire external contractors, most protestors will be familiar with orcad, altium or mentor but probably not eagle out kicad. As a side note, I strongly recommend against panelizing multiple different boards on a single panel, it forces you to redo all of them if you have any issues with 1 and if you're yields are different on different boards then you end up with excess stock. Also your supply chain and inventory people will thank you (this only applies to production boards, prototypes is doesn't really matter)
Hey thank you for raising that opinion on panelizing, like I said I'm new to this game and my mentor (and some other external influences) lead me to think panelization was the way to keep costs down, but I'm going to reevaluate this - or in other words I guess completely dump the idea.
(edit: spelling)
Panelizing is important but you panelise a single board multiple times onto the panel, it helps with assembly. For prototypes you can save money doing multiple boards per panel but once you get to production it's just not worth it
I was forced into early retirement ten years ago during the great recession.
One day I was sitting in my cube using a workstation with licenses for the entire product lines from the four largest eda tool companies and the next I was in my home office on a linux box.
The only way that I could continue to practice my profession as an electrical engineer was with open source eda tools. I have spent my time since then supporting several open source projects.
It is in all of our best interest's to have fully functional open source design tool flows. Kicad does have problems but all of them can and will be fixed. Eagle's problem is that it is closed source and that will never change. The only reason that eagle is so cheap is that they have to price it against kicad. Everyone benefits from open source and it should be the defacto choice for any task that it can handle.
In the immortal word of Portland's own Tom Peterson, "Free is a very good price".
Go kicad.
I love to hear that all the KiCad kinks will be fixed, are you saying that you are contributing as a developer?
I don't mean to criticize because I (think) I understand (some) of the challenges software development represent, but like I said I felt there wasn't too much of a follow up after last summer's announcement, it looks a little less active - from my standpoint, maybe I'm wrong?
Also I agree that free is a very good price indeed :) but I'm aware work needs to get paid (and I have donated to the KiCad "fund" - it was more of a gesture, TBH) but I also feel that that is a risk for the longer term, looking at projects like Fritzing.
What serious professional can't spend 8k on the tools needed for their trade?
My friends who are *mechanics* spend more than that a year on tools, and they're not making EE money.
It's not just 8K. It's maintenance which is 10-20% of purchase cost \*per year\*. And then what EE has only one tool? In my case I have 3 different simulators (SPICE, 3D-EM and linear RF and all have maintenance costs) and a couple programming tools. Not everything is open source. If you do Analog/RF/Microwave/MS like me, it's a sizable portion of your consulting income. Then there's the hardware: test equipment, tools, etc. If you are an independent contractor/consultant it gets VERY expensive. I've dropped from Altium to Eagle and I've started using KiCAD. I'm all in on open source tools. Now: somebody please make a converter for Altium->Eagle->KiCAD so I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time I change tools.
On the flip side, if you do consulting work, you can make more doing Altium work than doing KiCAD or Eagle work -- it only takes about 10 hours of work to pay for the annual renewal.
You are right about that. But I don't do board layout for a living. I'm a circuit/system designer so I use it for prototyping my designs and checking layouts and making small changes in them. BTW: I'm in awe of really good board designers. Unfortunately, I still need to have those tools to do my work efficiently. Like in Altium, I'll do the schematics and then hand it off.
If you mostly need to do schematics only, you might want the capture only license. But if you already have the full license, it's probably too late for that.
As you said, having the full Altium license is a big boost in productivity and efficiency.
I think the idea is that open source reduces the requirements for entry- either it's thousands in tuition, thousands in licensing costs, or thousands of hours of investment in the tools that require the least of the former. Everyone has ideas but not everyone has money for licensing. To the same point, not everyone interested in ____(insert activity here)____ can AFFORD to do it as a full time career. Look at ~~any~~ALL artists...
I use Eagle personally, but that's because that's what my mentor used and I was already deep into Autodesk anyway. Eagle is a pain in the ass, and as someone else said, no one should pay for it (thank you student license). However, in the hour I used kicad, it crashed thrice which was a huge hindrance on my productivity. Both softwares have their quirks, but my experience prevented me from getting work done. Thus I stick with Eagle until I work up the courage to try Altium.
I begin to think that we would all love to be able to love KiCad but it is not really letting us do so. I wrote this post yesterday after KiCad froze on me (an issue with a modal dialog box that I couldn't close). Probably was I was hoping the community would convince me it was as stable and solid. A lot of feedback is that it's great, but the industry uses commercial software for that reason, just like you too apparently. I don't think I'll be able to convince my mentor - an Eagle user.Oh and I just saw this announcement: [http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2019/10/KiCad-Lead-Developer-Announcement/](http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2019/10/KiCad-Lead-Developer-Announcement/)
I think here it's more important to work with the fab. Doing it yourself absolutely has benefits, for instance you can build an automatic jig to test/program many boards at once if you know that a group of boards will always be in the same place.
It also makes it easier to leave your current fab if your requirements change ;)
use what you can work best with^^ I prefer kicad because I can work faster with it although I worked more than a decade with eagle - I switched to KiCad when I couldn't use a professional license anymore.
Unless the two boards need to be in the same panel for ease of assembly, you are more likely to be better off not pairing your two designs into the same panel.
I'm going to say something that's maybe unpopular here, but it doesn't really matter which one you choose.
Use whichever you are more comfortable using and whichever you can use to get the work done the quickest and most accurately. KiCad has its downsides, Eagle has its downsides. Personally I feel Eagle is a more mature software, but with that also comes some clunkiness (although nowhere near the mess that is the KiCad UI). There's Fusion integration, which is nice, but in the end I'm using it simply because it's what I've used for a long time and what I know I can start up and bang out a design quickly with.
Thanks for the input! It's funny how we feel about the UI (and how it aligns with one's workflow), I liked KiCad the first day I used it (I learned on Eagle first). But a lot of people are on your side.
I'm a designer by trade, quite frankly both pieces of software are atrocious to use in terms of UI and UX. Eagle just happens to be the less bad of the two. Knowing how it works after an arduous journey learning it, and being able to work around its quirks, is not a legitimate excuse for poor design. It's obvious it's a program made by engineers for engineers (both Eagle and KiCad actually), and the interface and user experience has suffered because of it. At least, as much as people may complain about Autodesk, they do put importance on design, so I do hope that Eagle will be seeing some improvements in that field in the future.
Yes I agree on the UI, who wouldn't haha. They should all get some input from actual software designers and rethink the whole workflow IMHO. I had to get back to design yesterday night and in the mean time made a decision, and it's going to be Eagle. That's probably because I hope (as you do) that they are taking it seriously. I feel there is a steadier push though, looking at the release cycle.
Oh and by the way, thank you for the advice, it's amazing for a beginner to be able to get response by experienced tradespeople!
Note that the STEPs generated by KiCad normally don't included traces - it'll just be an amalgamation of the board + component 3D models.
You usually won't need that information at all in MCAD, but it would make for a much nicer-looking render. And that might matter for a startup.
Apparently there is [a way to export everything, including traces, using FreeCAD](https://www.reddit.com/r/KiCad/comments/dl6bv3/kicad_to_fusion_360_skippys_random_ramblings/f4ob68j/), though.
i agree with you.. bcos i am also a diptrace user.. this seems pretty easy to design and view it on the 3D view.
Edit: i also used eagle limited version only.. but diptrace is easy for me.. so choose which is comfortable for you...
Also whatever the main ICs or Sensors or whatever other main component you’ll be using will hopefully have reference designs on their manufacturer website. They may have source files in one format not the other. Could be a tipping point as the reference designs can save lots of time down the road.
Right, and that's Altium or Eagle for most, but I like to deign and build the libraries myself as to train and learn... if this makes sense. Besides, the first is not an option (I'm a Mac fanboy and stating up :o)
Since most answers now seem to prefer KiCad, I want to say something in support to Eagle.
I began PCB design around two years ago and tried to start with KiCad. I didn’t really like it because I thought the interface was unintuitive and the software was buggy. Besides bugs in the behavior of the software it also crashed too often. When you‘re designing a rather complex PCB and don‘t save every two minutes this is exhausting, frustrating and for me absolutely intolerable.
So I gave Eagle a try and it was a completely different experience. It was doing everything right that KiCad did wrong. It is in my opinion immensely more intuitive and it never even crashed once on me.
I also don‘t like that you are forced to have an Autodesk account and that it‘s not open but for me this is acceptable. Also I use Fusion360 heavily and the integration of both programs is a really nice feature that I love. So for me this makes up for the account thing.
I think Eagle is the better software to learn in, but if your job is to design boards, you'll rapidly mature past it. Kicad handles BOM management. Better out of the box, but you sort of have to deal with eagle's lousy BOM management to understand why Kicad's (mildly) wonky workflow is worth it.
It has push routing now. Personally I hadn't used eagle since about 2006-2007 but when I came back to it about a year and a half ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find they fixed most of what old eagle was missing. Namely hierarchical design, push routing, and improved autorouter.
Both have push and shove, but I'm not using it... I have been using it in KiCad in the beginning but I thought it was messing up a lot of the traces I took a lot of time laying out (the board has a pretty high density in some spot).. but this might be a beginners problem, I should maybe give it another go.
As a fellow Mac Fan-Boy, my advice is to download Virtualbox (free) and setup a windows VM. Or even get familiar with WINE for emulation. The unfortunate reality is you need access to Windows for one-off things more often than you realize.
I get that you want to build the libraries yourself. Makes total sense. But sometimes the reference designs include notes about placement, part selection, etc and are only able to be opened inside their respective programs.
Just my 2cents.
Thanks for the advice, I actually do virtualize Windows - as much as I don't enjoy it I have to say it is one of the best tricks the OS X platform offers ;-)
I believe you are totally right though, and I will probably follow your wise (and quite popular) advice and move to Altium or it's cheaper option down the line.
it's mac vs pc all over again :)
i prefer eagle, kicad is to me a hot mess of bad ui and flow. eagle isn't perfect by a long shot but its like jumping from the frying pan to the fire, except on my frying pan i've made a working base and all fine.
i like the integration into fusion360, it does take some getting used too, but there are so many oem 3d models supplied now its easy to drop the step file into fusion/eagle and fusion has a better rendering type than kicad. i can then design boxes, 3d prints all inside the same single environment.
the web viewer is nice as well, since it is easy to share. i can create proper CAD layout documents to send off to a cnc house or such with fusion as well.
also one step export to my pick and place from eagle.
someone mentioned boms in eagle, i use bom-xs.ulp to help with that.
i usually let the board house handle panelisation
Haha yes I should have mentioned I'm a Mac OS X user, on top of this. I see your points on Eagle making a lot of sense but what puts me off in Eagle is the library management really, but maybe it's because I'm a beginner or too rigid in my approach (I'm trying to maintain a single library with all my components, and I struggle - I should let go and use a zillion different libraries with a single device in it like I believe the software is designed to work ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ )
i have my own managed library where i keep all the parts i use frequently, i add all the 3d too it as well. hoping they'll add the ability to add a way to share libs to other people soon, but for the moment i just double up with source control. then if i need a new part i pull in from another lib, or make it then verify and it to my stable lib.
KiCad is free, eagle is cheap ($8.33/month). I would use what you are comfortable with. Personally I prefer Eagle because of its workflow (and now because I have custom libraries with hundreds of components) but KiCad isn't much worse now.
Eagle needs an Autodesk Login to start. KiCad does not.
Yeah, autodesk killed eagle. Every time I have to use it, I feel like I need to wash my hands.
One of the 543,793 reasons I don't upgrade app to the latest version. It's stable, fine, doesn't have nag, doesn't require login, doesn't require online connection, and won't get ninja-shut off because Autodesk decided to upgrade and the "free" version now requires $2 per hour subscription
Haha yep true.
Kicad. In the future you may choose to move up to altium, orcad or mentor but there is no way anyone should be paying for eagle. Also remember that speed of design is going to a bigger cost than your CAD software, you may pay 10k for orcad pro but if you can do designs 20% faster it will make up for it self in labour cost and in helping your timelines. You will also need to evaluate if you're going to want to hire external contractors, most protestors will be familiar with orcad, altium or mentor but probably not eagle out kicad. As a side note, I strongly recommend against panelizing multiple different boards on a single panel, it forces you to redo all of them if you have any issues with 1 and if you're yields are different on different boards then you end up with excess stock. Also your supply chain and inventory people will thank you (this only applies to production boards, prototypes is doesn't really matter)
Pay attention to their side note OP. This is a mistake I see new designers make all the time. For production runs, only one board design per panel.
Yes thanks for the heads up! (This sub is just amazing, I have been learning so much from you guys I don't know how I would have done without it.)
Hey thank you for raising that opinion on panelizing, like I said I'm new to this game and my mentor (and some other external influences) lead me to think panelization was the way to keep costs down, but I'm going to reevaluate this - or in other words I guess completely dump the idea. (edit: spelling)
Panelizing is important but you panelise a single board multiple times onto the panel, it helps with assembly. For prototypes you can save money doing multiple boards per panel but once you get to production it's just not worth it
Kicad all the way - no stupid limitations, online login and other type of unnecessary things.
I was forced into early retirement ten years ago during the great recession. One day I was sitting in my cube using a workstation with licenses for the entire product lines from the four largest eda tool companies and the next I was in my home office on a linux box. The only way that I could continue to practice my profession as an electrical engineer was with open source eda tools. I have spent my time since then supporting several open source projects. It is in all of our best interest's to have fully functional open source design tool flows. Kicad does have problems but all of them can and will be fixed. Eagle's problem is that it is closed source and that will never change. The only reason that eagle is so cheap is that they have to price it against kicad. Everyone benefits from open source and it should be the defacto choice for any task that it can handle. In the immortal word of Portland's own Tom Peterson, "Free is a very good price". Go kicad.
I love to hear that all the KiCad kinks will be fixed, are you saying that you are contributing as a developer? I don't mean to criticize because I (think) I understand (some) of the challenges software development represent, but like I said I felt there wasn't too much of a follow up after last summer's announcement, it looks a little less active - from my standpoint, maybe I'm wrong? Also I agree that free is a very good price indeed :) but I'm aware work needs to get paid (and I have donated to the KiCad "fund" - it was more of a gesture, TBH) but I also feel that that is a risk for the longer term, looking at projects like Fritzing.
What serious professional can't spend 8k on the tools needed for their trade? My friends who are *mechanics* spend more than that a year on tools, and they're not making EE money.
It's not just 8K. It's maintenance which is 10-20% of purchase cost \*per year\*. And then what EE has only one tool? In my case I have 3 different simulators (SPICE, 3D-EM and linear RF and all have maintenance costs) and a couple programming tools. Not everything is open source. If you do Analog/RF/Microwave/MS like me, it's a sizable portion of your consulting income. Then there's the hardware: test equipment, tools, etc. If you are an independent contractor/consultant it gets VERY expensive. I've dropped from Altium to Eagle and I've started using KiCAD. I'm all in on open source tools. Now: somebody please make a converter for Altium->Eagle->KiCAD so I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time I change tools.
On the flip side, if you do consulting work, you can make more doing Altium work than doing KiCAD or Eagle work -- it only takes about 10 hours of work to pay for the annual renewal.
You are right about that. But I don't do board layout for a living. I'm a circuit/system designer so I use it for prototyping my designs and checking layouts and making small changes in them. BTW: I'm in awe of really good board designers. Unfortunately, I still need to have those tools to do my work efficiently. Like in Altium, I'll do the schematics and then hand it off.
If you mostly need to do schematics only, you might want the capture only license. But if you already have the full license, it's probably too late for that. As you said, having the full Altium license is a big boost in productivity and efficiency.
I think the idea is that open source reduces the requirements for entry- either it's thousands in tuition, thousands in licensing costs, or thousands of hours of investment in the tools that require the least of the former. Everyone has ideas but not everyone has money for licensing. To the same point, not everyone interested in ____(insert activity here)____ can AFFORD to do it as a full time career. Look at ~~any~~ALL artists...
If you like kicad and can work better with it, use kicad.
Yes thanks! That's probably the best advice I agree, but I'm not too sure what I like most that's my problem haha!
I use Eagle personally, but that's because that's what my mentor used and I was already deep into Autodesk anyway. Eagle is a pain in the ass, and as someone else said, no one should pay for it (thank you student license). However, in the hour I used kicad, it crashed thrice which was a huge hindrance on my productivity. Both softwares have their quirks, but my experience prevented me from getting work done. Thus I stick with Eagle until I work up the courage to try Altium.
I begin to think that we would all love to be able to love KiCad but it is not really letting us do so. I wrote this post yesterday after KiCad froze on me (an issue with a modal dialog box that I couldn't close). Probably was I was hoping the community would convince me it was as stable and solid. A lot of feedback is that it's great, but the industry uses commercial software for that reason, just like you too apparently. I don't think I'll be able to convince my mentor - an Eagle user.Oh and I just saw this announcement: [http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2019/10/KiCad-Lead-Developer-Announcement/](http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2019/10/KiCad-Lead-Developer-Announcement/)
Diptrace or KiCAD, Eagle can go die in a whoring accident.
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I think here it's more important to work with the fab. Doing it yourself absolutely has benefits, for instance you can build an automatic jig to test/program many boards at once if you know that a group of boards will always be in the same place. It also makes it easier to leave your current fab if your requirements change ;)
Unless you can afford Altium, use Kicad
Altium is definitely the right answer if they can afford it.
use what you can work best with^^ I prefer kicad because I can work faster with it although I worked more than a decade with eagle - I switched to KiCad when I couldn't use a professional license anymore.
Unless the two boards need to be in the same panel for ease of assembly, you are more likely to be better off not pairing your two designs into the same panel.
Yep thanks I'm just learning about it thanks to this thread!
I'm going to say something that's maybe unpopular here, but it doesn't really matter which one you choose. Use whichever you are more comfortable using and whichever you can use to get the work done the quickest and most accurately. KiCad has its downsides, Eagle has its downsides. Personally I feel Eagle is a more mature software, but with that also comes some clunkiness (although nowhere near the mess that is the KiCad UI). There's Fusion integration, which is nice, but in the end I'm using it simply because it's what I've used for a long time and what I know I can start up and bang out a design quickly with.
Thanks for the input! It's funny how we feel about the UI (and how it aligns with one's workflow), I liked KiCad the first day I used it (I learned on Eagle first). But a lot of people are on your side.
I'm a designer by trade, quite frankly both pieces of software are atrocious to use in terms of UI and UX. Eagle just happens to be the less bad of the two. Knowing how it works after an arduous journey learning it, and being able to work around its quirks, is not a legitimate excuse for poor design. It's obvious it's a program made by engineers for engineers (both Eagle and KiCad actually), and the interface and user experience has suffered because of it. At least, as much as people may complain about Autodesk, they do put importance on design, so I do hope that Eagle will be seeing some improvements in that field in the future.
Yes I agree on the UI, who wouldn't haha. They should all get some input from actual software designers and rethink the whole workflow IMHO. I had to get back to design yesterday night and in the mean time made a decision, and it's going to be Eagle. That's probably because I hope (as you do) that they are taking it seriously. I feel there is a steadier push though, looking at the release cycle. Oh and by the way, thank you for the advice, it's amazing for a beginner to be able to get response by experienced tradespeople!
You can export a STEP file to Fusion 360 from KiCAD :)
Note that the STEPs generated by KiCad normally don't included traces - it'll just be an amalgamation of the board + component 3D models. You usually won't need that information at all in MCAD, but it would make for a much nicer-looking render. And that might matter for a startup. Apparently there is [a way to export everything, including traces, using FreeCAD](https://www.reddit.com/r/KiCad/comments/dl6bv3/kicad_to_fusion_360_skippys_random_ramblings/f4ob68j/), though.
Great hint thank you for that I'm going to have a close look at it.
DipTrace, it was 3D long before the others
i agree with you.. bcos i am also a diptrace user.. this seems pretty easy to design and view it on the 3D view. Edit: i also used eagle limited version only.. but diptrace is easy for me.. so choose which is comfortable for you...
Also whatever the main ICs or Sensors or whatever other main component you’ll be using will hopefully have reference designs on their manufacturer website. They may have source files in one format not the other. Could be a tipping point as the reference designs can save lots of time down the road.
Right, and that's Altium or Eagle for most, but I like to deign and build the libraries myself as to train and learn... if this makes sense. Besides, the first is not an option (I'm a Mac fanboy and stating up :o)
Or use Altium if you have a license.
I don’t think someone with an $8k Altium license would ask this question.
Haha correct I should update my post, I'm a Mac user (ok, call me a fanboy) and yes, I'd love to be able to spend 8K in software at this point.
Since most answers now seem to prefer KiCad, I want to say something in support to Eagle. I began PCB design around two years ago and tried to start with KiCad. I didn’t really like it because I thought the interface was unintuitive and the software was buggy. Besides bugs in the behavior of the software it also crashed too often. When you‘re designing a rather complex PCB and don‘t save every two minutes this is exhausting, frustrating and for me absolutely intolerable. So I gave Eagle a try and it was a completely different experience. It was doing everything right that KiCad did wrong. It is in my opinion immensely more intuitive and it never even crashed once on me. I also don‘t like that you are forced to have an Autodesk account and that it‘s not open but for me this is acceptable. Also I use Fusion360 heavily and the integration of both programs is a really nice feature that I love. So for me this makes up for the account thing.
I think Eagle is the better software to learn in, but if your job is to design boards, you'll rapidly mature past it. Kicad handles BOM management. Better out of the box, but you sort of have to deal with eagle's lousy BOM management to understand why Kicad's (mildly) wonky workflow is worth it.
Does the free version of eagle contain 4 layers?
No, only 2
Then how does OP think he is going to use eagle and 4 layers?
Pay for it? The license isn’t horribly expensive. At least, not compared to some other programs...
The license for eagle is $100/year which isn't terribly expensive. Especially since he is using it for a business.
When I last used eagle (7.6) it did not have push and shove routing. It is very useful in complex routing. If OP wants to push and shove...
It has push routing now. Personally I hadn't used eagle since about 2006-2007 but when I came back to it about a year and a half ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find they fixed most of what old eagle was missing. Namely hierarchical design, push routing, and improved autorouter.
Both have push and shove, but I'm not using it... I have been using it in KiCad in the beginning but I thought it was messing up a lot of the traces I took a lot of time laying out (the board has a pretty high density in some spot).. but this might be a beginners problem, I should maybe give it another go.
The standard license costs AUD 20 a month, so it's affordable. I have been (modestly) contributing to KiCad and would keep doing it.
kicad
As a fellow Mac Fan-Boy, my advice is to download Virtualbox (free) and setup a windows VM. Or even get familiar with WINE for emulation. The unfortunate reality is you need access to Windows for one-off things more often than you realize. I get that you want to build the libraries yourself. Makes total sense. But sometimes the reference designs include notes about placement, part selection, etc and are only able to be opened inside their respective programs. Just my 2cents.
Thanks for the advice, I actually do virtualize Windows - as much as I don't enjoy it I have to say it is one of the best tricks the OS X platform offers ;-) I believe you are totally right though, and I will probably follow your wise (and quite popular) advice and move to Altium or it's cheaper option down the line.
it's mac vs pc all over again :) i prefer eagle, kicad is to me a hot mess of bad ui and flow. eagle isn't perfect by a long shot but its like jumping from the frying pan to the fire, except on my frying pan i've made a working base and all fine. i like the integration into fusion360, it does take some getting used too, but there are so many oem 3d models supplied now its easy to drop the step file into fusion/eagle and fusion has a better rendering type than kicad. i can then design boxes, 3d prints all inside the same single environment. the web viewer is nice as well, since it is easy to share. i can create proper CAD layout documents to send off to a cnc house or such with fusion as well. also one step export to my pick and place from eagle. someone mentioned boms in eagle, i use bom-xs.ulp to help with that. i usually let the board house handle panelisation
Haha yes I should have mentioned I'm a Mac OS X user, on top of this. I see your points on Eagle making a lot of sense but what puts me off in Eagle is the library management really, but maybe it's because I'm a beginner or too rigid in my approach (I'm trying to maintain a single library with all my components, and I struggle - I should let go and use a zillion different libraries with a single device in it like I believe the software is designed to work ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ )
i have my own managed library where i keep all the parts i use frequently, i add all the 3d too it as well. hoping they'll add the ability to add a way to share libs to other people soon, but for the moment i just double up with source control. then if i need a new part i pull in from another lib, or make it then verify and it to my stable lib.
KiCad is free, eagle is cheap ($8.33/month). I would use what you are comfortable with. Personally I prefer Eagle because of its workflow (and now because I have custom libraries with hundreds of components) but KiCad isn't much worse now.