Comment by dbcurtis

Fair question.

In the category of still stuck in the 1980's:

Handling of bus rippers, and hierarchical nets as they expand through topological hierarchy. Especially in regard to the flexibility of naming ripped sub-nets.

Restrictive topological hierarchy.

Lack of separation between attributes files and topology files. Inability to mate a single topology file with multiple different attribute files for different circumstances.

There are also features like buried components and complicated material stack-ups that commercial tools handle, but I really can't fault an open-source tool for not including things that are expensive to validate.

General complaints:

UI is cranky and not intuitive, especially w.r.t. part libraries.

Obtuse and restrictive footprint specifications. The sad thing here is that KiCAD went through a gut-and-redesign of the footprint specification format, and seemed to willfully ignore the RS-274X specification and willfully ignored the hard lessons that led us to the methodology of using RS-274X macros to define footprints. If I can write a trivial RS-274X aperture macro for my footprint, I should be able to specify that in a footprint and have it come out correctly in the Gerbers. HELLOOOO!!! Please read up on years-old industry best-practices before "improving" your system. (Admittedly, I haven't read the KiCAD footprint spec documents lately, maybe they have evolved.)

In the category of just plain broken:

I don't use KiCAD a whole lot, but not too long ago a client asked for design file deliverables in KiCAD format. I was annoyed that my Rev A boards came back with trivial issues that the design rule checker completely missed. Sorry, that is one piece that needs to be pretty damn solid for me to take the tool seriously. (I have also use GEDA and have plenty of complaints about it, also, but at least the PCB DRC has never led me astray.)