KiCAD

KiCAD is a free and open source EDA (Electronic Design Automation). It started in the nineties of the previous millennium by Jean-Piere Charras. The first release was in 1992 (yes, 30+ years ago!!!) and has been in continuous development ever since… There's a group of dedicated KiCAD enthousiasts who spend an incredible amount of their free time in the further development of KiCAD. Even the CERN is contributing considerably to this project. Just to show you this software packet is not a small "developed-in-a-barn" project, it's seriously taken up by renowned institutes too like the CERN!

There's also a yearly FOSSDEM where the core developers announce new features and road maps for the near and less near future.

KiCAD is the EDA package I'm using already for years to create my PCB's. Discovered in the early nillies (must have been around 2002, IIRC), I immediately liked the power of the application at that time.

Bought other packages in the past (EdWin XP, EasyPCB,...) which were quite expensive at that time. Yes, a couple of thousands of Belgian francs (pre-Euro era) was a lot of money to me for this kind of programs... And yes, even the early versions of KiCAD could compete easily with those paid versions.

I'm currently using version 5.1.2, although there's just a new major release of KiCAD version 6.0. However, I'm having quite some PCB's made with version 5.1.2, I don't want to switch over like that to safeguard myself against incompatibilities that might pop up using another major version...

Some peculiarities with KiCAD 5.1.2

I recently discovered issues when you have PCB's with a rounded corner. At least until version 5.1.2, it was not possible to have tracks drawn in the neighbourhood of the circled area the rounded corner was occupying.

On the right side there's a picture showing the issue. The blue circle is visualising the imaginary area the yellow rounded corner occupies. Whenever a track is in the neighbourhood of that invisible rounded corner circle, it prevents you from drawing the track any further. This is a known bug and was solved from version 5.1.3 onwards.

To overcome this in earlier versions, you have to change the following settings (although not really very comfortable for the other regions in your PCB since you will switch on options that can bother you further down the road).

Select Route
By default, the option "Walk around" is selected.
Select "Highlight collisions"
Now you will be able to also tick the "Allow DRC violations" check box

Once you've done this, you will be able to draw "into" the invisible circled area of the rounded corner, however, you will see indications popping up saying you're violating some DRC rules (obviously, since you switched the tick box that allows you to violate DRC rules).

Once you've laid out the traces that were otherwise stopped, you can again switch off the above changes and go back to the default settings.

Although not really very convenient, it's a way to bypass this bug. Or, of course, switch to a newer version of KiCAD.

Found the information here: https://forum.kicad.info/t/routing-tracks-in-a-board-corner-with-rounded-corners/17263

Area in which you cannot put traces as such, unless you change some options. Solved in versions KiCAD 5.1.3 and higher...

Exporting PCB in .wrl or .step format

When you want to use a 3D view of an existing PCB on another PCB you have to export that first 3D view such that it can be used as extra input when setting up the 3D view of the other PCB.

To export an existing PCB into a 3D view there are two options:

Export in VRML format (Virtual Reality Modelling Language).
This export will result in a file with the extension .wrl.
To export the PCB using VRML select Pcbnew -> File -> Export -> VRML...
The following popup will appear:
Export in STEP format.
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