First of all you know you can duplicate stuff with crtl+d. (Make one pad with GND net and duplicate that.)
Also in open gl canvas you can use the array function to place stuff in regular grids.
And have you tried the interactive router? (I came from eagle and this feature ensured that i never go back.) This is another feature only available in open gl canvas.
From your screenshot i would guess you are still in the legacy (default) canvas. No wonder you think eagle is better than kicad if you use this old stuff.
KiCad is different certainly. However, almost any EDA program can be frustrating at the beginning. If you want KiCad to be Eagle, then you will never be happy.
But, if you are willing to learn and be flexible and stick to it past initial frustration, then you may find that you actually prefer KiCad.
I’ve never done anything that complex but my reading leads me to believe there are many more things to take into consideration than just making sure the pins are all connected to the correct trace. While not needed I try and work those ‘best practices’ into my simple boards so they become habit because sometimes this seems like voodoo. I’ll read a “Why did this work on my breadboard but not on my professionally manufactured PCB” thread somewhere and these seem to be the hardest errors to catch after the fact. And sometimes most expensive.
Newbies to board layout love to see the software has a huge library of parts and an auto router because that makes life easier, right? (No idea what level the OP is at and not meaning this as disparagement) In the end though, avoiding work seems to make more of it. Spent two hours looking for a library part on the internet somewhere? Yeah, I just learned to make the parts and footprints. Want to make sure your layout is optimal? Hand routing goes a long way in teaching that.
OP. You are allowed to have your own reasons and goals. No problem there. I’ve found this a great community to learn the software AND proper board layout. If this software doesn’t meet your expectations and Eagle does, that’s OK. Like I said earlier, unless someone steps forward to do it, I don’t see auto route being a concern for the developers and most on this forum. I went through great lengths to get Free Routing working. Took me 10 minutes to decide it wasn’t worth it. Once you get the hang of the manual routing tools, if you choose to stick it out, I think you will see why. Best of luck in your project.
That’s great that you route everything by hand at work, but that’s your professional capacity, these are just some LED drivers for a Halloween display. Not everything is going on the space station, know what I mean? In the five projects like this I’ve done before, I’ve used Eagle’s autorouter and they work fine. You and I would have ended up at the same destination except I’d have a few extra hours left over. It’s 2017, auto-routing should exist that works “well enough” for hobbyists. Anyway, I digress. I found a solution with building vias and fills into the footprint. I appreciate the help.
I’m confused, are we talking about Freerouter or KiCad autorouter? The version of FreeRouter I use doesn’t seem to handle zones well, there are a few different versions around.
This is getting off topic, but is there a tutorial on the different canvases available and their features? How do I know when I’m using the best tools? I had been assuming that the different canvas choices had to do with rendering quality or somesuch, and did know they had different abilities.
The new canvas is the open gl canvas. (developed by the guys at cern.)
Currently in the stable release some features of the default canvas have not been transferred over to the open gl canvas. (There are some guys who say they can not use the open gl canvas because they miss some very important feature. I never used default.)
No new features are added to the default/legacy canvas.
The next kicad release (long overdue) will probably switch to the open gl canvas as default and keep the old canvas as legacy option.
Here the official list of new features only found in the open gl canvas: (Nowhere on this side is it mentioned that these features are only in open gl.)
There are also several discussions here on the forum concerning exactly this topic. But they dent to get derailed. The best one that i could find is this one.
It does focus on the nightly build versions though. So some features discussed there might be missing in the stable releases. (Nightly build is the current development master build every night. So it can be quite unstable.)
I personally only use the open gl canvas. So i can’t give a list of features missing from it. But i can definitely say that the interactive router, differential pair routing and array functions are missing from legacy.
Switching between canvases is done with F9/F11 or in the view menu bar.
(Just switch between them, play around a bit and see what you find fits your workflow better.)
We’re very saddened you’ve decided to move back to Eagle. Would you tell us what functions Eagle does automatically that Kicad doesn’t? This would let us improve our software.
I’ll bet they’re the same 10 FAQs we get here every month. I also expect most of them are already on the KiCad wishlist. That’s apart from the things that can be done in KiCad but people don’t know how, or not as easily.
Still, it is interesting to ask the question “What top 5 things form package XXX would you like to see in KiCad?”
Recently I read someone say that better trace-length matching tools stopped them using KiCad.
I know it exists for the PCB editor, but please PLEASE add a function to highlight nets on a schematic. This was something Eagle does effortlessly–click, and it’s highlighted. I’m sitting here squinting at my schematic like an old fart trying to trace lines with a pencil tip held up to my monitor. It’s absolutely nuts to me this feature doesn’t exist—unless I’m missing something?
-The mouse re-positioning thing is driving me bonkers. I’m sure I’d get used to it after a time, but is there a way to turn it off?
-There is a bug where selecting the “exchange footprint” option works once, and then never again. I have to go through the edit properties window to click the button after the first time.
-To circle back on the topic for this thread, I’m unclear what the proper workflow is to get the autorouter to work with zones.
-Please let me add copper layers to footprints that aren’t pads and pins. Or at least let me draw polygon pins, is that a function? Am I supposed to be playing tetris with pin shapes to get the footprint I want?
-Adding thermal planes and vias is a pain. It’s irksome and nonsensical to me that the only way to add vias is to make them a separate component, and then I have to go inside the properties and type in the net manually for each one. In Eagle you could add them as easily as you could add traces. I should be able to select the wire tool, press V for via, and not have it disappear for whatever reason once I refill zones.
Separately, I know Freerouter is a separate program, but it took me a while to devise a workflow for getting a good ground plane, which was to disable the bottom layer completely in the autorouter, then let it do its thing, then re-enable it for any spare traces it couldn’t solve, and then fill in a ground plane back inside Kicad. Is this how it’s supposed to work?
I’m not giving up on it completely. I just sent off the board to fab after finishing it in Kicad, but oy, so much frustration.
Not sure what you mean here?
In what tool (eeschema or pcb_new)? What canvas (if pcb_new)? What operation?
Do you know what settings you choose when it did not work?
What is the difference between the footprint you have on the pcb vs the one in the lib? (It might be that kicad does not see a difference and therefore thinks the footprint is already exchanged.)
You can add drawings on copper. But DRC does not support it.
From the mailing list i gather that custom shaped pins are either already in the development version or are very close to being merged. (In the stable version the only workaround are overlapping pads. In other words playing Pad-Tetris should come to an end with the v5 release.)
For now there is the array function and the option to add tht pads to the exposed smd pads of components as a workaround. (For the later see QFN-16-1EP_3x3mm_Pitch0.5mm_ThermalVias in Housings_DFN_QFN as an example)
Re: the mouse repositioning, this is a common behavior across all modes and functions when I go into a selection menu. For example, when drawing a schematic or placing a part, it’ll open up the window to select the part; once the part is selected, the mouse will snap back to the position I clicked to place the part. I get that it’s supposed to be a shortcut, but this kind of mouse behavior doesn’t exist in any other program I use and it’s very counter-intuitive. Do you not experience this behavior?
The most frustrating is when I accidentally click on overlapping items on the pcb and the contextual menu pops up to ask me which component I wanted. I can’t click out of the menu; if I try to close it, the mouse snaps back into the menu. I have to select a part just to close the menu. It’s incredibly frustrating and again, contrary to behavior in any other program. This kind of thing adds to the feeling that the program is fighting me.
Re: the exchange parts function not working, it’s been across the board. I don’t know what you mean by settings. I’ll want to swap out a footprint; so I right-click, select exchange footprint, and the menu comes up to select the new part. Except, for the next time and every time after that, no menu comes up, nothing happens.
My answer was for the case where the dialog opens but it says no footprints exchanged (or does it say “[Reference]: Not changed”? Can’t remember the exact wording.)
That it does not open is strange. You could alternatively try it via the footprint properties dialog. (press e while hovering above the footprint.) In this dialog press the exchange footprint button.
(In open gl this is the only way i know of how to change the footprint. The entry exchange footprint does not exist in the right click menu.)
I don’t really notice this. I normally never use the right click menu. (I use keyboard shortcuts for nearly everything.)
And if i open a big dialog (like add symbol) i find it nice that it remembers where i was. Otherwise i might have forgotten where i wanted to place it
But i agree this is a strange behavior.
I just switched to legacy to see what you mean. (It is really strange) I would advice you switch to open gl. It behaves a lot nicer in this regard. (no jumping back to the previous cursor location.)
