Dear paulvdh, this was a good reply from you and I totally agree! We will soon see if I’m a happy KiCad user or not. Things can of course take its times…
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One area where KiCad actually is very slow is loading or reloading the libraries when something has changed so that they need reloading. Specifically the footprint libraries. Sometimes it takes a minute or so, even with a decent machine with SSD. I hate it.
Other than that, I don’t feel any slowness. KiCad is very snappy even with old hw. Some functions of course necessarily take some time so that they aren’t within 0.1 second immediate, like running the DRC or filling zones if the design is nontrivial.
As others have said, it would be easier to answer if you can identify some specific workflow or function which feels slowish.
If you want I can make a video or 2 some day to show what’s “slow” and sometimes seems a bit illogical. Its not always very easy to explain in text what “stops the flow”…
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… and also (might be a bug/must be so) after converting an Eagle project to KiCad some (or many) nets have no connections/net references at all in the PCB. So, patient as i am, I try to re-route it in the schematics, re-annotate and “update pcb from schematics” to the PCB, still no connections…
It might be worth checking your video drivers.
You don’t say what OS you’re using, though with the mention of “hour glasses” I’m guessing Windows?
Some time ago there was an interaction between KiCad and certain AMD video driver features for Linux that caused shockingly poor response times. Like 1 to 2 seconds to do anything that moved the view. The fix was to turn off that particular feature in the video driver.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re dealing with some issue like that.
The way nets work in eagle is quite different from KiCad.
From what I understand a “net” in Eagle is a list of pin names that connect together, while in KiCad it are the (default green) wires themselves and their endpoints on the pins of schematic symbols that define a net.
During Eeschema / Tools / update PCB from Schematic [ F8 ], KiCad generates a netlist (internally) and ports it to PCBnew, but it is a manual operation. What I understand from eagle, it always tries to keep the schematic and PCB in sync continuously.
Because of this difference, the Eagle importer has to jump through some hoops to translate the netlist. I think this difference in concept may also be quite important if you have experience with Eagle and want to learn KiCad. A short overview of differences is in:
I used the importer only a few times just out of curiousity, and once for a decent sized project, and that required quite a lot of manual repair work, but it was a lot better then the alternative (re do everything). In it’s current state the eagle importer is not perfect, but it’s usable. It’s also still being actively improved. Just the last few days two changes have been made: https://gitlab.com/groups/kicad/-/issues?scope=all&state=closed&search=eagle
I’d wager a bet this is the issue the OP is having.
An NVME M.2 drive significantly reduces the loading time over a SATA SSD.
The file per item model makes this time depend a lot on the antivirus software used
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For the time being it’s OSX Catalina (10.15.7) and I don’t see graphical issues because of the hardware, it’s the programs own behaviour is certain situations and look (icons design etc/may be becaus I’m not yet used of it/normalised) which seem to be the issue; as mentioned I compare it with Eagle in similar situations. One thing in KiCad is fantastic and it’s the 3d-viewer, the look of the PCBs is probably the best/most real looking one out there, compared to any other PCB software I have seen. One thing which is kind of a mess, though, once again compared to Eagle which runs exactly like all software should run, is front/back/update this update that, click here, click there to annotate schematics/PCB to stay in “sync”…
Automatic schematic -> pcb update has been discussed some times. See https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/4469. You can add a thumb up there to make your opinion known (it may even affect the priority list of the developers).
The annotation dialog is mostly unnecessary IMO and newly added items should be annotated automatically; see https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/1973. The dialog popping up breaks the workflow when not summoned on purpose.
One thing I’ve (re) discovered to be noticeably slow is moving big blocks. As a test I have a schematic with 1200 resistors and moving them all in Pcbnew gives a screen update rate of about 1Hz. (But I am doing this on an old first gen i7-870).
When they are all selected zooming and panning is also noticeably slower compared with those resistor not selected / highlighted.
My experience with KiCad is that it’s quite snappy, even on low-end spec’d machine (as for today standards: 2.6GHz dualcore i5, 16GB Ram, ordinary SSD).
Except for some library loading (usually only on startup) there are no operations that cause any serious slow-downs.
Definitely, some video screencast would help to find out whether your @TheSwede experience with KiCad is normal or not (e.g. caused by some incompatibility/other issues).
Hello there,
just an Info. I am using KiCad 5.1.10 on an old Athlon 2x3Ghz with a similar outdated Nvidia 9600 and KiCad is really “quick”. No Problems here.
(I am running Linux Mint XFCE)
I made small Layouts (5 to 10 cm) on an ATOM280 Netbook. No fun but usable.
I agree that my old eagle (up to V5) might have been even faster but the user experience and the possibilities were much below todays KiCad. 
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I don’t know how to make thumbs ups on that place.
You have to be signed in to gitlab. Then use the thumb up. 
Another quick question: Are you working with an imported Eagle project?
It’s possible it has some artifacts causing an issue.
Yes, so far ONLY imported Eagle projects.
Can you zip and attach one of those projects here? Something with which you see the hour glasses? We could test and see if there’s some problem with imported projects.
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Might be worth opening some of the demo projects to see if they are more responsive. There are a number of quite complex designs here https://www.kicad.org/made-with-kicad/
I’ve found KiCad very responsive on macOS Catalina - apart from the time loading libraries, there are normally no unexpected delays. Reducing the number of libraries to just those that you need helps.
A big part in this I have no clue how to understand the library stuff in KiCad. For example, when I see a “component” that need an update in a board or a schematics, I go where I think is the most logical way to go and edit what is needed to be edited. But after saving the “component” (Device?/Package?/Symbol/Footprint? – what the heck is what here???) only just only the one “component/designator/component number” I was choosing when updating is saved in “a library somewhere". The others – let’s say 500 units of the same “components” on the board or in the schematics – have to be updated the same way, one by one… Of course I understand I don’t understand how this should be performed, and I can not find any video or SHORT text description how to do this. Again, in Eagle it’s very simple and fast.