[15155]

Until you need to route DDR (or any other parallel bus nets.) Or use any significant amount of impedance control. Or use blind/buried vias. Or tent specific sides of vias.

Kicad is great, but there are very solid use cases that are substantially more painful than other commercial EDA offerings.

[mips_r4300i]

I've watched the growth of kicad since 2013. Far more usable now, though it was very poor at the beginning.

In its current state I could recommend it for most hobbyist stuff and some simpler commercial PCBs. Far better than Eagle ever got.

Meanwhile I will continue to use Altium for everything just because I'm fast with it. When time is money and $8k is just another expense it's well worth it.

[eternityforest]

What kind of projects doesn't need all those things, but yet is still too complex to just do in LibrePCB? To me the nicer and less keyboard driven UI(last I checked, haven't tried KiCAD in years) makes Libre worth it.

[SeasonalEnnui]

Agreed! The gap is getting smaller, I can imagine feature parity in another few years. Some fellow nerds doing that kind of stuff in $$$-EDA say it isn't exactly smooth sailing in those EDAs - regular crashes and so on.

[MagerValp]

What’s the issue with blind vias? You had to enable them manually earlier, but as of 7 I think they’re always enabled.

[15155]

The level of UI polish and control Altium gives you over the construction of HDI vias (and just in general, the properties pane) is substantially greater.