I recommend you just jump in and convert one or more of your projects. The only caution is that you of course should have a decent backup strategy in place.
Secondary tip is that the first (few) time(s) you do the conversion, it’s just for practice. Get a feel for how it works, toy a bit around with the results. If you make big mistakes, just do it over, if you encounter some serious problems, post them on the forum. If it “mostly works”, then change the status of the conversion from “experimental” to “working”, and then do the next project.
The eagle importer has been working for quite a few years now, and sure, there are issues, but it works pretty well. The author of the Rosco-M68k project once mentioned on hackaday that he was curious about KiCad, and I reacted to that by doing the initial project conversion to KiCad for him. That was in the beginning of 2020.
In 2022 you already wrote:
There is also a difference of what your goals are. Do you just want to do a “one to one” conversion, or do you want to convert it to a fully native KiCad project to the point that remnants of the eagle history are erased? (Such as replacing the imported resistors / capacitors with KiCad’s native versions).
I posted that because, at the time, I was getting better results (using Eagle 9.x) by exporting in the legacy 7.x format from Eagle, then importing into KiCad. As opposed to just saving in 9.x format.
Things have improved since; unlike Eagle, KiCad is very actively developed and improves greatly year on year.
I waited (probably too long) to switch until the announcements made it clear Eagle was a dead end. I don’t use Eagle for anything, nowadays. KiCad is better, besides being actively developed and better supported.
I have a design with some Eagle footprints that use polygons. Rather than edit the footprint, I have replaced it with a KiCad footprint, working in the schematic editor, but it ends up with a different orientation on the board after updating the board from the schematic. Is this just due to the way the footprints are oriented in the two libraries?
What’s the best way to replace schematic symbols in a project imported from Eagle? is it a case of delete the symbol, select the appropriate replacement from a KiCad library and fix up the board?
No. Do not delete the symbol, as this will break the connection between the schematic and the PCB. You can use Schematic Editor / Tools / Edit Symbol Library Links
Another option is to first go too the properties dialog of a symbol, and then use Change Symbol.
You wrote that about 23 hours after my post. There is no rush to answer “quickly”. It’s better to just try things out, and only then report whether it worked, or whether you encountered any problems and want more advise.
I’ve had more time to play now and I have a clean design with no ERC or DRC
KiCad is actually quite intuitive and I am gradually learning how to do things that were second nature in Eagle. The conversion is not as difficult as I was expecting. I haven’t yet found anything that I cannot do (with a lot of help from Google and searching the forum).
Next task is to generate production data for checking against existing Eagle output.
Then on to a much more complex 4-layer design.
Thanks to all those who take time to respond on the forum.
