KiCad 8 is here!

The more I see of KiCad, the more I like. Do you find things you can not do in KiCad that you can do in eagle?

Hi Gene,

I totally agree with that assessment from James. I think we both did the same thing, moved from EAGLE to KiCad and probably never looked back. The last version of EAGLE I used was v7 (and I used EAGLE extensively between releases 4-7), and I believe, the only function that EAGLE could do and KiCad still cannot, is that curved shapes are more flexible in EAGLE; you can truncate curves when making fancy board edges for instance. Other than that, I can't think of any significant feature parity issue. (Note: if very intricate board edges are needed, there are workarounds, for instance, using Inkscape, or FreeCAD, or even using Python).

Note that some of the core EAGLE features are fast to execute, because EAGLE makes extensive use of non-Windows mouse and windows shortcuts, a bit like the old dedicated CAD workstations did, back when MSDOS/Windows was incapable of being used for high-end CAD.

I make fewer errors with KiCad compared to EAGLE, for a couple of reasons:

(1) It supports modern arbitrarily shaped pads properly, unlike the hacks that are needed with EAGLE, which generate errors that need to be manually ignored!

(2) it supports 3D view (so I can actually see things from both sides from all angles including how components will physically fit onto the board) which EAGLE never supported (I think it does now, but now it's subscription-only). 

There are other smaller reasons for making less errors too, such as each net is labeled on PCB traces (which only later subscription versions of EAGLE supported).

Althoiugh some things take more keypresses to do with KiCad, it's very intuitive, so one can learn fast. I learned from scratch, and made my first PCB with it within 5 days, and there were no errors (apart from a connection I made to 5V instead of 3.3V, which was my mistake, and was easy to fix with a cut trace):

There are great speed improvements with laying out PCBs, so that allows you to experiment more with little time-wasting. For instance, I can move parts around, and then when laying out traces, KiCad will semi-auto-route the trace to avoid others, in real-time as I move the mouse. It's a massive time-saver.

And, a key benefit as James too mentions, is that bugs and feature requests are taken seriously and usually acted on, if it makes sense. I've raised a few bugs and feature requests, and have had a good experience.

Incidentally, even if the software crashes, it maintains a backup! Hence, I'm quite confident in trying out a 8.0.0 release rather than waiting for .1 or .2. I've never lost any edits so far using KiCad versions 6.0 or 7.0 or any dot-version.

Hi Gene,

I totally agree with that assessment from James. I think we both did the same thing, moved from EAGLE to KiCad and probably never looked back. The last version of EAGLE I used was v7 (and I used EAGLE extensively between releases 4-7), and I believe, the only function that EAGLE could do and KiCad still cannot, is that curved shapes are more flexible in EAGLE; you can truncate curves when making fancy board edges for instance. Other than that, I can't think of any significant feature parity issue. (Note: if very intricate board edges are needed, there are workarounds, for instance, using Inkscape, or FreeCAD, or even using Python).

Note that some of the core EAGLE features are fast to execute, because EAGLE makes extensive use of non-Windows mouse and windows shortcuts, a bit like the old dedicated CAD workstations did, back when MSDOS/Windows was incapable of being used for high-end CAD.

I make fewer errors with KiCad compared to EAGLE, for a couple of reasons:

(1) It supports modern arbitrarily shaped pads properly, unlike the hacks that are needed with EAGLE, which generate errors that need to be manually ignored!

(2) it supports 3D view (so I can actually see things from both sides from all angles including how components will physically fit onto the board) which EAGLE never supported (I think it does now, but now it's subscription-only). 

There are other smaller reasons for making less errors too, such as each net is labeled on PCB traces (which only later subscription versions of EAGLE supported).

Althoiugh some things take more keypresses to do with KiCad, it's very intuitive, so one can learn fast. I learned from scratch, and made my first PCB with it within 5 days, and there were no errors (apart from a connection I made to 5V instead of 3.3V, which was my mistake, and was easy to fix with a cut trace):

There are great speed improvements with laying out PCBs, so that allows you to experiment more with little time-wasting. For instance, I can move parts around, and then when laying out traces, KiCad will semi-auto-route the trace to avoid others, in real-time as I move the mouse. It's a massive time-saver.

And, a key benefit as James too mentions, is that bugs and feature requests are taken seriously and usually acted on, if it makes sense. I've raised a few bugs and feature requests, and have had a good experience.

Incidentally, even if the software crashes, it maintains a backup! Hence, I'm quite confident in trying out a 8.0.0 release rather than waiting for .1 or .2. I've never lost any edits so far using KiCad versions 6.0 or 7.0 or any dot-version.