Hello everybody, this my first posting here.
I recently made the switch from Cadsoft Eagle V770 to KiCad 5.1.x (on Linux).
In order to speedup things, I attended to the online video course “Kicad Like a Pro 2nd ed.”.
It helped me a lot. I just finished my first project and I must say that I’m impressed by Kicad.
Specially the layout editor. Compliments to the KiCad team!
However, there are also some things I miss in Kicad or I don’t know how to do it.
Things that are easy with Eagle but not with KiCad.
There’s no ‘G’ (drag command) in symbol and footprint editor. Changing the width and height of a rectangle requires to manually edit and changes the coordinates of the two endpoints of all four lines.
There’s no ‘E’ (edit) command in symbol editor for circles and polygons. The only way to change the size of a circle is to delete it, set the grid to an appropriate size and try again.
There’s no possibility in the layout editor use a single line for keep-out (only areas).
So, instead of a line I need to draw rectangles/polygons.
It’s not possibility to select multiple objects (for a move) while not selecting an object in the midst of it (or de-selecting one or more objects from a group of selected objects),
After starting KiCad, starting the footprint editor takes 40 seconds on an old pc.
It takes 17 seconds on a brand new, high-end, workstation with an ssd.
Creating new symbol libraries by copying and modifying existing ones is cumbersome.
I found it easier to use a texteditor and manually copy and edit the files.
I like how easy it is to add and adjust a 3d (step) file to a footprint.
Overal, I like the Eeschema and PcbNew. Library management and creation is a disaster.
I hope it will be better with V6.
One other thing. Both with 5.1.7 and 5.1.8, I had some segfaults in a relatively short period.
This is extremely rare for me with Eagle V770 on Linux. It happened only once a year or so.
I just wanted to share my first experience with KiCad with you. Again, overal I’m positively surprised how far KiCad has come. Compliments for the team!