Transitioning to KiCad

I just started working for a new company as an Electrical Engineer. At my old job, we used Altium designer to make schematics and PCBs. At my new job, my supervisor asked if I thought I could get by using a cheaper or free option. I’d wanted to learn KiCad anyway for a while, so I suggested I start the next project using KiCad to design the PCBs. It took a week or two, but I’ve pretty well adjusted to using KiCad and I don’t really miss Altium at all now.

It just so happens that KiCad 5 was released shortly before I started learning KiCad and so this is what I learned on. I get the impression that KiCad has a lot of advantages over the previous versions. It seemed to be a very well polished and put together tool.

http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2018/07/KiCad-5–a-new-generation/

The only downside is that KiCad 5 was released so recently (July 2018) that most of the tutorials online assume you are using an older version. Even the official KiCad guide seems to be written for KiCad 4.

I’m really excited about the idea of an open source PCB design tool. I’ve already seen the benefit of allowing anyone in my company to download KiCad and share my designs with them.