KiCAD - learning KiCAD 10 in 2026

I last visited this 2 years ago in 2024.
I just launched KiCAD 10 on my Fedora 44 system without a problem.

I have a small project that should be a reasonable starting point, so away we go (again).

Learning

• Getting started in KiCAD (official tutorial)

• Phil's lab and KiCAD 9 part 1 (2 hours!)
• Phil's lab and KiCAD 9 part 2 (2:30 hours)
• Phil's Lab and KiCAD 6 (1 hour, 40 min)

• My notes on Phil's lab KiCAD 9, part 1
• My notes on Phil's lab KiCAD 9, part 2

In the version 9 tutorial, he switches to working with a MSPM0 controller (ARM Cortex-M0+) from Texas Instruments, for better or worse. For the purposes of learning KiCAD, it hardly matters. A nice benefit of his videos is that you learn plenty of other things along the journey.

Perhaps try the "Hawk" tutorial

• Github: Hawk, step by step tutorial (good, but version 5)

Important keyboard shorcuts

• ESC get you out of wiring mode (or any mode).
• Control-z is the shortcut for undo.

• "a" opens up the component chooser (22,000 or so these days)
• "p" gives you the power symbol browser (for power and ground)
• Control-d copies the component under the cursor.
• "v" lets you change a component value.
• "e" launches the field editor
• "m" lets you move a component.
• "r" rotates a component (90 degrees counterclockwise).
• "w" puts you into wiring mode.
• Control-s saves your work (do this often).

I just want a schematic for my website

Inkscape works fine to scale the SVG that comes out of KiCAD (which is fairly microscopic).

Old stuff

• Draw simple circuit with KiCAD

• Hackaday, 2019, bite sized KiCAD pieces
• Hackaday, 2016, time to learn how to use KiCAD
• 6 lessons from KiCON 2019

Tips from Daniel

KiCad absolutely. As with anything, it takes time to learn how all of the pieces integrate together. Me and the EE, ME team have been doing it for a while so a lot of the pieces were already in place. Managing the part symbols, footprints and 3D files to get the rendering is straightforward (once you've done it hundreds of times) .

Also a lot of tricks; for example like PCB outline (like this where the board needed to be a certain size with a particular shape) are just learned over time. (Phone Camera -> email -> Photoshop ->Kicad Image scaler/converter)

Kicad is fine. One of the main reasons I've used it is that over the years, I've used many overseas EE and layout people. Kicad being free makes that possible. I'm sure that the expensive big name CAD systems have more capabilities, especially in autorouting. For the kind of boards I've always done, 2 or 4 layers, auto routing never has really added anything. I'm very particular about routing and getting the placement and mapping right makes it far easier to route.

You just need good eyes, a magnifier and good tweezers to place SMT parts. Hand soldering ok on 0603 size or larger parts. ICs like SOIC can be hand soldered as well. Forget any fine pitch parts.

Solder paste stencils are cheap. When we build out new fully populated boards we'll use the toaster reflow oven. Also have a special hot air gun that we use for rework and changing single parts. Boards with really fine pitch parts we have an outside assembler do.

RF is tricky but the reference designs from Silabs and from the antenna companies reduce how smart you have to be to play in RF voodoo land. LTE and Bluetooth not particularly difficult. We have a small solder paste reflow oven which we built from a kit supplied by this guy. Has always worked great for our prototypes.

• Whizoo