The FreeCad stepup mod is fantastic and yes further improving this would seem a more sensible approach. However, it does rely on people learning a new tool, knowing such a tool exists and being able to get said tool. I think the biggest limitation is its inability to handle custom pads, but a group effort should resolve that
some basic improvements to the outline wouldn’t go amiss though
In my opinion any serious PCB designer needs to be familiar with a mechanical CAD tool. FreeCad is one option, but nothing stops someone from using a paid/commercial mechanical CAD tool alongside KiCad. I have yet to see a PCB design tool that provides an extensive sketching/constraints system like can be found in every mechanical CAD tool. So, I agree with @pedro that developing our own would be a waste of effort: we should just make it easier to interact with mechanical CAD tools, and make special effort to make the interaction with FreeCad easy since we have the opportunity to work with FreeCad developers (and plugin developers) to improve the links in both directions.
Edit: one exception to the above is the cases I’ve seen where a mechanical CAD tool decides to bring in PCB design as a feature (such as the direction Autodesk is going). This is a valid approach, but likely not the right approach for the open-source world.
Eagle went the “integration” way because probably for Autodesk it could be too unprofitable to spend the efforts in closing the feature gap to the top tier EDAs. So they decided to focus on the integration with their core business, and probably not developin the core EDA functionality.
For KiCad I’d prefer to bring the EDA features to the top league, and leave the 3d/mechanical CAD integration at the export level (so basically leave the parametric thing to FreeCAD), and spend developers efforts to make KiCad one of top EDA tools.
Yes, I tried locking edge.cuts graphics just yesterday, it works well. You can also group the lines together, or group them together with connector footprints etc. to ensure none of the critical items is changed by accident.
I learned FreeCAD during this Corona time earlier in 2020.
Mostly to overcome many of the limitations presented in Altium.
I was virtually unaware of open source / free alternatives before.
On the FreeCAD forum I saw regularly references to KiCad and how they could work together.
I am very impressed of both FreeCAD and KiCAD. It seems they complement each other. When I tried to push the limits in FreeCAD earlier this summer the told me that this is better done in Blender.
I don’t think you will ever do anything in one gigantic package.
I have seen the trend in Altium that they want to extend the EDA package to a complete product lifetime management software. They also try to buld in collaboration functions like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Altum has become bloated, slow and expensive.
The hardest time with multiple software is the different user interfaces.
For example I hate to have the panning on the middle mouse key.
I can look some features but not all, not the Board outline for example.
I can not figure out how to connect buses with different net names as suggested in this post. Anyone have any idea? I tried QD[A…F] and then QD[A,B,C,D,E,F]. I doesn’t seem to work.
{NETA NETB NETC SUB_BUS[7..0]}
You’ve got old version…
By the way, you don’t need to repeat the bus labels twice, the hierarchical port will serve as a label also
In Altium you can take it one step further. For an SPI bus you can do like. {SCLNK MOSI MISO CS}. And if you through a label on the bus line like SPIA it becomes like SPIA{SCLNK MOSI MISO CS} and the nets get the names SPIA.SCLK, SPIA.MOSI etc.
Am I pushing it to far now?
You can do this in KiCad too 
Syntax is the same
Confirmed working, must have come the last coupler of days
Oh I agree, after all the PCB is the mechanical realisation of your PCB and thus there is now physical considerations (balanced stackup, copper balancing, MLCC too close to board edge…) to contend with.
Once your PCB is expected to interact with anything else: metalwork, other PCB’s then its a totally different ballgame. Height of components associated with xy positioning…
Interactions with other mcad tools is definitely a must for KiCad to be taken seriously. Freecad has that great plugin, but what about other tools? A recent 4card design of mine (all spatially aligned using kicad:freecad) was wrapped in material using NX. The problem is NX has a real poor STEP importer and early mechanical interactions one of my cards would be ~120meg exported from Kicad … NX would sit there for hours…
The same design imported via KiCadStepUp, as well as import copper (workaround the custom pad issue) would then export as 70Meg. Pass that through @Seth_h stepreduce and its 24meg … however NX would still take ages to import
Thats a separate discussion though. One of the biggest problems is not knowing what is possible. What if the installer “advertised” FreeCad and KiCadStepUp as means to perform detailed PCB outline and footprint work.
My mechanical team import kiCad STEP files into Solidworks with few problems
Thats true, PCB-Design is a VERY special work. And very few people do it for fun ?!
I am happy that KiCad is alive and Linux compatible !
@Bow It is not overly clear from your original description, but what version of KiCad did you use for those observations? Maybe you can edit the description to log it there, such that it is way more clear if someone comes by in a year
I don’t know if I am serious PCB designer, but I am designing PCBs for many years and I have never any need for mechanical CAD tool. When we designed metal boxes for our devices (about 1990) we just did their drawings manually. To specify plastic box treatment the Open Office Draw is enough.
Till now my 3D imagination was enough (I know - if I were designing cell-phones it would be not enough).
Since I start using KiCad I learned FreeCAD to be able to make 3D models but I use it only to get funny picture of my PCBs.
