It lets me zip through the schematic more quickly and just focus on the circuit. So, when laying out the schematic, I place say a resistor and then, later on, I tell it if that resistor is a thru hole device, SMD 0805, whatever.

That said, the 'push and shove' feature is pretty good.Ī big difference from EAGLE is that in KiCad the footprint of a component is not tightly coupled to the component. Yes, I know, auto routing is Satin! I still would like to have it at least to generate a starting point.

I had some success on me Windows 7 box but absolutely none on my Macbook. There are instructions to DL another package and take a jar file from it. As far as I can tell, KiCad does not have its own auto-router and I'll have to integrate it with free route or something like that. One thing I still don't have working yet is auto-routing. The schematic files it generates are directly readable by OSHPark. Once you have it working and get used to it, you can lay out a board fairly easily. I have already posted these on the KiCad forum. If you install it on a Mac you'll have problems getting it to find the footprint library due to errors the installer makes. It does take some getting used to but none of the apps I considered has a great user interface, and KiCad is at least no worse than EAGLE and a few others. I have been using KiCad 5 for a week now (not full time of course - I have a real job) and I have come to like it.

Eagle 7.7.0 license file