Hi everyone,

we are currently looking into several EDA suites as a potential base
for a new software we are developing. It will essentially be an
extremely simplified EDA tool targeted at the needs of designers and
artists, who want to bring their breadboard-based prototypes to a PCB.
We are affiliated with the Arduino prototyping platform
(http://arduino.cc).

We would like to program our own GUI, but build on existing software
for the backend (like routing, checking, exporting). The most
interesitng tools we found so far are KiCad, gEDA and EAGLE, and would
appreciate if you could help us make a decision. The most important
questions at the moment are these:

- Do you think that KiCad is suited for such an approach? Are its
functional parts cleanly separated from the GUI?
- Would it be possible to write a Java GUI (we are favouring Eclipse
GEF at the moment) and write Java wrappers for the KiCad libraries? Or
should we use Qt Jambi to integrate closer with KiCad?
- Why should we choose KiCad over gEDA or EAGLE
(features/adaptability/..)?

If we choose KiCad, we would of course contribute back to this very
nice project and be interested in hiring an experienced KiCad
developer. Last but not least, if our software takes off as Arduino
did, this would bring a ton of new users for KiCad. :)

Thanks a lot for your insights and support,
Andre Knoerig

Interaction Design Lab
Univ. of Applied Sciences Potsdam