All the cloud-based crap they added is 100% worthless to us (and I suspect most others). Watching the Altium support forum it is very obvious people are sick and tired of the lack of the constant issues with the software. I had a few issues with some vias, but it was easy enough to fix. I have used it before and gotten acceptable results. There is also a format converter for kicad that allows you to import Altium designs into KiCad. I also have not looked into it that much but one of the focus areas for KiCad 6 is the netclass rules system, so it should be pretty close to feature parity by then. Its not much of an issue for embedded systems. The net class rules system in Altium allows you to more easily set clearance rules between different nets and is useful for things like power electronics, when you have a set of nets that can gave traces close to each other but far away from the ground plane. KiCad keeps improving, but with KiCad 5 the biggest disparities between KiCad and Altium is the ability to check 3d component clearances with an enclosure in real time and the net class rules system. KiCad also seems to have a lot less perplexing errors. I find the KiCad interface a lot more responsive and find the UI more intuitive. I have done work commercially in both Altium and KiCad and use KiCad for personal projects.

I am mostly interested in making the transition when KiCad 6 is released. What I mean by that is that some of the stuff being pushed by modern AD might be nice, yet not deal-breakers when it comes to doing the work. For context, we were doing this kind of work back in PCAD 200x days (which was later transitioned to AD) without any issues. The boards we design range from simple two layer boards to multi-layer high speed embedded and FPGA boards. Beyond that, the intent is to do all new work with KiCad. We would keep Altium around (without any updates) to be able to open old work. We are sick and tired of the bugs and issues that continue to plague every AD release, with bug fixes creating new bugs and new useless features being their focus rather than bringing back some degree of stability to the software.Īnyhow, our situation is unique in that we don't really need to port any prior work to KiCad.

Interested in hearing from those who have moved their work from AD to KiCad.

Convert kicad to altium