@foone Everyone has his/her Achille's heel .. mine is PCB routing as well .. I can put complex schematics/do simulations in relatively short time .. but then comes the layout problem .. here "my brain kind shuts down" and I start crying after I routed some tracks. Normally I get 80% done then I get stuck with "impossible routing" and I start crying .. 😢
@foone This is why every time I start making KiCAD stuff, I dust off the little DSL I made ten years ago to plop out custom symbols and footprints. No I would not like to put a 40-pin symbol on my schematic when I'm using 5 lines of this poor microcontroller, save that for the gerbers I want a tailored symbol for this design!
Alas, it's very old crumbly python, and rewriting it is currently behind "reimplement Unicode" on the todo list, so...
Have you tried Altium? I ran their free-trial for a while a couple revisions ago, had a huge parts library and strict design rules. Was great for a simple rectangular board design and wouldn’t let me screw up spacing or edge clearance. The software gated when I tried a circular board with radial component alignments and no software likes arc segments for traces…
@foone why does nobody seem to have a wee parametric solver CAD that lets you say "this edge of this pad is so-and-so mm from that edge of that hole" so that you can directly input datasheet drawings rather than having to faff around with a calculator and make mistakes?
@foone I swear footprints take up 90% of my energy during any design and I hate it
although to be fair parts selection/ordering is the other 70% that I hate