KiCad 5 – A New Generation

KiCad 5 is an exciting release.

Most notably over kicad 4 it allows arbitrary placement of vias not attached to a PCB trace. It sounds like a small change, but it was really one of the last big features that other EDA programs like Eagle or Altium had and KiCad did not.

When I first got into electronics Eagle (closed source) was the defacto standard EDA software for those learning how to make PCBs and many online projects. Now there is no little/no reason to use it over KiCad.

CS toolchains have a long history of being FOSS, but for EE / embedded electronics a lot of important tools are closed source (and often very expensive). Its really exciting that a FOSS PCB layout tool is competitive.

KiCad has made incredible progress over the last few years and shows no signs of slowing down. Mindshare for kicad is growing with folks like digikey now offering symbols and footprints in kicad format.