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by 15155 1101 days ago
KiCad is sorely lacking facilities for analyzing trace impedance and power plane capacity - very simple features and all of the building parts (mainly the board stackup information) are already there.

I've wanted to add this stuff (and hopefully push upstream), but haven't been able to find the time.

These are basically table stakes in every commercial offering.
1 comments
amelius 1101 days ago
Yes but these are not showstoppers. You can do a lot with scripting in Python (and e.g. Shapely for geometrical processing) and you can even find other user's scripts online. Of course, it would be nice if e.g. computing the length of a trace was as simple as a mouse click (perhaps it is in the newest version), but this is certainly no reason for many to switch to a closed, expensive, commercial tool.
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15155 1101 days ago
> computing the length of a trace was as simple as a mouse click

Combined with a keybind (6 or 7 or 8 - one of the tuning binds), getting the length of a trace is about 1-2 clicks.

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