Does KiCAD have the features I use in Altium?

[SembazuruCDE]

I have some notes to add to @eelik’s excellent post.

@eelik

3. Define the needed footprints, including extra layers for milling and engraving of the front panel.

Here are layers in the footprint editor:

Here is a good description of what all the layers are for:

What is the meaning of the layers in pcb_new and in the footprint editor? (KiCad 5 and earlier)

A pcb is a 3-dimensional object with different materials stacked on top of each other. If a designer talks about designing a 2 layer board then they typically mean that this board has two copper layers. A 4 layer board has 4 copper layers and so on. In addition to these copper layers there are other technical and documentation layers available. A good introductory read is this post by @dchisholm : Any way to make the screen more understandable? In KiCad the following layers are available. L…

@eelik

7. Create a new PCB from template, and import the schematic into it.

Describe “template”. KiCad has template projects, but I suspect you mean something different.

Expanding on this, templates are at the project level in KiCad, and are usually for providing common board shapes with common connectors. Because of this you would want to start your project from a template and then start on the schematic. Not so easy to start with a schematic and apply a template later. Though, I suppose if the pcb template was board outline (and mfg standards) only one could copy your “template” pcbnew file into the project, and then rename the copy to fit the project, any time before doing any layout. But this is a filesystem level task, not a KiCad task.

@eelik

13. Pour the ground plane, stitch it with via’s in a random pattern

KiCad uses zones (fills) for planes. There’s no automated via stitching, you just add vias manually. I’m not sure if there exists any python script for that.

I think there may be some python scripts for via stitching, but I haven’t used them so I don’t remember what they are called nor where to download them. Stitching is easy to do manually in 5.1.5. Just select the via tool and drop them where you want on the board. The vias will automatically be assigned to the net where you drop it. This includes stitching fills as well as stitching traces. If you find tutorials about drawing traces inside a fill of the same net to get vias you have found an old and now obsolete tutorial.