FreeCAD was chosen by a trusted, active member of this community who was willing to do the work that was needed at the time. You’ve posted a link to software that is ‘info wall’ protected and, after trying two different browsers, won’t let me download it anyhow.
User error. 
Like I said, if it’s improved enough in the meantime to be useful, or if we end up making it useful, then that’s good too.
Really?! It was free for me, anonymous with no account, and “just works”. Downloaded with Firefox in snap on Ubuntu Studio 22.04. (not a big fan of snap, but that’s how it comes) Installed first try, and works like the YouTube tutorials say.
It was a bit odd to find all of that though - the website isn’t laid out the way I expected, and the tutorials are not well connected to it - but it’s all there.
For you or for me? Did you cross it out because you eventually found what I did? Or are you still having trouble?
Yes.
freaking word limit fluff
Unfortunately, I’ve only started to use it myself, so I’m still bumbling around too. But everything I’ve done so far has worked well…once I figured out how this piece of software thinks. Mostly parametric modelling of some large woodworking projects, then getting dimensions from it.
I have not tried to integrate it with anything outside of its ecosystem, so it’s entirely possible for that to be a deal-breaker. It does import a bunch of standard formats though, so maybe that could be an option…
Just thought I’d mention a possibility, is all.
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I’d like the ability of saving/loading presets for plotting/fabrication output.
Without that, the risk of using the wrong options is too high. Unless you absolutely never change options. But if you use plotting frequently for different use cases, that IS going to happen.
I’m astonished about how many of the wishes in these lists are already there, sometimes even in older versions. This one is in 9.0rc.
People, please at least read the development news thread(s) first.
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I’d like to have a clear separation between “Design Relevant” settings and settings like window position, last open files, etc.
This would it make much easier to have the different config json files under source control.
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The settings relevant to the actual design on the one hand and the settings for each user (UI etc.) are already mostly separated. The .kicad_prl file has the UI stuff and should be left out from version control, backups etc. If you find something which is in a wrong file, you can start a discussion about it in the forum or file it as an issue.
As eelik says, that’s been true for a while. See the file types documentation here for which ones you don’t need under version control.
Hi gkeeth and eelik
Thanks for your response. I know the different file types cause I am using KiCad since V4. As an embedded HW and FW developer I also now what files normally go into GIT. Maybe may wish above was not clear enough so I will try in other words.
In our small HW Team I would like to have a setting that all KiCad user have the same “Design Relevant” setup and that this cam out of GIT. Modification after a review go back to GIT.
The Idea is to symlink the local git repo to the KiCad setting location (as ex: ln -s ~/Desktop/eb-kicad/kicad ~/Library/Preferences/ on OSX).
This setup works beside the following things…
For me “Design Relevant” settings are: (jsut some to show the problem)
- annotation settings (eeschema.json)
- default fieldnames (eeschema.json)
- “origin_invert_x_axis”: false (pcbnew.json)
- “origin_invert_y_axis”: true (pcbnew.json)
- “origin_mode”: 1 (pcbnew.json)
- “plot settings” (pcbnew.json)
- “gen_drill” (pcbnew.json)
- fp-lib-table
- sym-lib-table
“Fancy Settings” are:
- last open files (eeschema.json), (pcbnew.json)
- last open windows position (eeschema.json), (pcbnew.json)
- “last_footprint_lib_dir”: (eeschema.json), (pcbnew.json)
Now the problem is that “Design Relevant” and “Fancy Settings” are stored in the same files and therefore it is not possible to have them in GIT or it makes it at least very difficult to track/merge only the important things.
So it would be nice to split the different json files in static and dynamic files. The static files could then go easy to GIT.
I know the big discussion would be then to decide what settings go in which files.
Hope that helps to understand my idea.
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Hi,
The possibility to have git integrated in the kicad UI for librarian, with a dedicated GUI related to the footprint generator that will help to filled all files linked and create footprint, 3d models, populates the merges request.
This to simplify the whole process and to recruit more librarian.
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V9 will have support for exporting to XAO formats to SALOME:
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I agree, FEM simulation integration is definitely a direction we should be heading.
FYI, not sure if you noticed, there is support for export to SALOME coming in v9:
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Would be great if Kicad integrated simulation with ngscopeclient:
This would improve visualization of simulations and workflow. For instance, after producing real product any custom signal processing you might want to do would already be setup. It also just generally seems like a smoother workflow, and you could directly compare your simulation to reality.
May be a plugin approach similar to
could cover this…
@Drinausaur is there any chance to convert your code to a plugin?
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Please, select all capacitors of 100nf with MPN 100nF/25 on a schematic of 9 pages and 625 components.
Altium also allow select multiple components too, is not the focus. There a lot of instances when you need a specific selection. If you use a snapeda footprint, with a lot of garbage fields (providers, alternatives, copyright… etc) maybe you want select all components with a field called “providers”.
The selection tool requested, is not mandatory of usage, is only a tool that can be usefull for the user.
If you want to select using “garbage fields”, wouldn’t you be better off using a Data Base?
I understand. Sadly many times you have to work with inherited projects. Or sometimes the work is to homogenize projects done by different people at different times.
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As THT and SMD footprints are often radically different in size, I don’t see the value of an “alternate footprint”. Perhaps you want to have an SMD board and another THT board, with a common schematic. That is also a painful process as the underlying database of components would have to be duplicated and edited separately.
(little) Alignment aids:
Ever used a mac with Pages or Keynote? It draws crosshairs when moving a picture and snaps to the center relative to another object. It also snaps to the center of a page. You even feel a click in the trackpad.
In KiCad, if I want to make a board visual nice, I can do that with align in the context menu. Personally, I would like some more simple aids to easily align symbols or footprints.
When tracing multiple tracks along side, I have to manually try to evenly space them. Would like some automation with that. (Edit: I saw you can drag multiple tracks in v9 
)
Trace a track between to pins and centering it between it takes more effort than I would like from a tool. It has to do with the grid of course, but it would be much more appealing if a trace runs through the middle.
4 Likes