
KiCad 5 – A New Generation - conductor
http://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2018/07/KiCad-5--a-new-generation/
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wbraun
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.

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jjrh
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.

