For one, all libraries are hosted online, and KiCAD needs to look them up every time you fire it up. KiCAD keeps schematic symbols and component footprints in separate libraries and you need to link a symbol to a footprint using one of several different methods. Managing symbols, footprints and libraries is not easy: Overall, it is a pain to create new designs with new names from existing ones and for me this is the biggest drawback of the tool.Ģ. You will have to rename all the subfiles and create a new netlist and yet some library issue might still create problems. You may copy the project to a few folder but renaming the files will create all sorts of issues. There is no nice way to create a new project from the existing one.

Cannot Save a project and create a new one from existing one In this article I will write more in detail about the issues with KiCad tool which I faced during my design.ġ. But that was after some happy and lot of frustrating time with the tool. I did manage to get PCBs fabricated, assembled and tested successfully.

Since the free use of Diptrace is limited I went ahead with my first PCB design with KiCad. Of them following tools came forward as possible winners.

Few months ago I wrote an article to compare the various EDA tools available for the “not so rich” designer.

Diptrace freeware limitations