KiCad 10 is about to be released soon (release candidate 2 is available), and I just recently checked out the new features list.. I'm surprised, that's a massive amount of features, and many of them look interesting.
Some of the features I can see myself using:
* Ability to implement jumpers properly
* Hatched fill - very useful for marking off areas of PCB on a silkscreen
* Something they call auto-route preview, which I believe just shows a possible routing completion for a single trace
* Dark mode for the application
* More graphical capabilities, such as scaling, and ability to precisely enter co-ordinate values for shapes
* PCB sub-circuits (I think)
For anyone not familiar with KiCad, but wishes to try it, I'm biased but still think one could do worse than viewing the 50-minute video I created a while back (ad-free, it's not monetised). The KiCad user interface has not significantly changed since the video was created.
A lot of beginner video tutorials initially avoid how to create custom symbols and custom footprints, but I included that in the 50 minutes, since it is key information needed for almost any project.
Creating Circuit Boards with KiCad
For other CAD software users, anyone tempted to give KiCad a tryout this year?
Also, there are other CAD version import capabilities, but personally I reckon that's not the best way to transition across, and is possibly more useful to users who are slightly familiar with KiCad, and then need to port across a few of their projects. Reason is, all PCB CAD systems implement some things differently, and you may want to tweak things after import, which is easier when you're at least slightly familiar with the new CAD package, by trying a few projects from scratch.
