[rheingoldheavy]

Chris Gammell of The Amp Hour is also getting http://kicad.info off the ground and there are some really great people providing advice in there.

I've gotten burned too many times using the built-in libraries (hidden pins in EESchema not being connected to PWR/GND / incorrect pin spacing in CvPCB) so I throw those together by hand now. In EESchema I would have done it anyway, just to get the pins arranged in a way that makes my drawing look purrrrty, but the drawing/verifying of footprints does get tedious.

My understanding is that some features were removed (or significantly modified) in subsequent releases of KiCad post the version I'm using (BZR 4022), specifically the BOM export, so I haven't bothered installing another version yet. I have a series of designs about to go into production so I'm leery to change up before those boards get committed for assembly.