I have to say KiCad 6 is much nicer, since Pcbnew and Eeschema finally have the same UI. Having made a lot of mistakes on my first "big" design, resulting in multiple redraws, I actually find KiCad quite usable.
LibrePCB sadly doesn't have hierarhical schematics, and they've saved me a lot of time and effort. I hear Horizon EDA now has them, though, I'll have to try it.
Not having hierarchical schematics is a deal breaker for me. It saves so much time in SCH capture, and especially in layout where you can duplicate layouts of identical circuit blocks.
I do find some of the routing actions in PCBnew to be a bit buggy in v6. Weird selections, and a lot of adding short trace segments where none seem to be necessary.
I also don't like having to give up the PCB and SCH diff tools that emerged around the v5 file format ecosystem. Those make working collaboratively in Kicad a breeze.
If I could wave a wand and change one thing about kicad, it would be support for parts databases. Having database managed component libraries with sourcing information stored in the db makes a ton of stuff about designing electronics easier.
Comments
I have to say KiCad 6 is much nicer, since Pcbnew and Eeschema finally have the same UI. Having made a lot of mistakes on my first "big" design, resulting in multiple redraws, I actually find KiCad quite usable.
LibrePCB sadly doesn't have hierarhical schematics, and they've saved me a lot of time and effort. I hear Horizon EDA now has them, though, I'll have to try it.
Not having hierarchical schematics is a deal breaker for me. It saves so much time in SCH capture, and especially in layout where you can duplicate layouts of identical circuit blocks.
I do find some of the routing actions in PCBnew to be a bit buggy in v6. Weird selections, and a lot of adding short trace segments where none seem to be necessary.
I also don't like having to give up the PCB and SCH diff tools that emerged around the v5 file format ecosystem. Those make working collaboratively in Kicad a breeze.
If I could wave a wand and change one thing about kicad, it would be support for parts databases. Having database managed component libraries with sourcing information stored in the db makes a ton of stuff about designing electronics easier.