I think you have forgotten when you were a beginner.
Have been designing PCBs off and on for 20 years. This is what I use the autorouter for. I put together a placement that has logical clustering and flow to it and try running the autorouter. If it has a really hard time with lots of vias, I focus on tuning the placement in that area until it can get a relatively ok autoroute. Then I tear up the traces and manually route. I figure “I can do cleaner routing than the autorouter, but if it thinks the best it can do is 20 vias on this group of traces I don’t stand a chance”
But for the average PCB, which has mix of switch-mode power, analog, high-speed digital, and low-speed digital, it takes longer to specify the constraints so the autorouter can do a good job, let alone wait for it to hopefully complete. So it's rarely used outside of particularly tedious but regular tasks, like hooking up a wide memory bus.
(I do think this is something where AI could make a big improvement. If it could infer most of the constraints from the circuit then it would help with saving time. The challenge then becomes marrying the ML-generated output with the hard constraints effectively)
What would be helpful, however, are some better checking tools. Some mistakes, like running a trace right through the bottom side of a through-hole and creating a short that wasn't there on the schematic, seem very easy to detect and warn the user about before they end up spending hours cutting traces and running bodge wires.
I have not checked if kicad or Librepcb have it, but PADS and Altium do.
It wouldn’t make sense to add yet another giant parts library to the world of PCB design. Make it easy to import from the major part and footprint libraries found linked from DigiKey.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.
> - Is there auto-routing? How good is it?
Autorouting is of very limited value for only certain narrow use cases. Even the high dollar CAD packages won’t route your board for you in a reasonably good way, but they can be useful for routing length-matched buses and such after the user has set up all the constraints properly.
> - "Import formats: DXF". For what, the board outline? DXF is for mechanical CAD. You can't import a board layout or schematic that way.
DXF import is a very common operation in PCB layout, not just mechanical CAD. It’s used all the time to pull in board outlines, important silkscreen items, and other features.
These criticisms are really a stretch for a project like this that is just getting started. If you’re expecting a feature set identical to four and five-figure CAD programs that have been developed for decades then, yeah, you’re going to be disappointed. Can we not just appreciate that this project is ramping up and providing more options?