I am so, so, SO excited for Kicad v11

I found this thread on the Kicad forum earlier this week. It got me very excited for Kicad v11 - so excited, in fact, that it convinced me to go download a nightly build. That’s never happened to me before!

I was right to be excited. Kicad v11 is a massive upgrade. Here’s what I’m excited about, in no particular order:

• Native visual git diffing!! I’ve wanted this for years, and it’s now a built in feature. I briefly used Leo Heck’s kiri utility but found it hit or miss to get functional.

• Support for git merge. I haven’t actually tried this one yet, but being able to merge Kicad schematics and PCBs is a huge step forward. I still don’t love the Kicad/git user experience. I have high hopes that this feature will finally help me resolve my hangups with this workflow.

• Orcad imports. I’ve always been partial to NXP chipsets, but their reference designs are all Orcad based. With native import, I can now easily swipe vendor validated DRAM layouts for my favorite application processors. Very cool.

• Stitching via tool support. Somewhat minor compared to other features, but a real friction point on finishing design. This saves a PCB designer ten minutes of dull clicky-clicky. A game changer? No - but it’s a sign that the Kicad dev team is paying attention to the frictions that real PCB designers experience. Also love that it does via caging for stripline routing as well as broad stitching placement.

• Drill charts and drill maps. One of the last Altium feature gaps in fab outputs, now closed!

• The ctrl+O “Optimize Trace” feature in PCBnew. Helpful for cleaning up little trace route gremlins.

I’m so impressed with the Kicad team’s work in the past five years. I love that the bar is still being raised, and in ways I care about.