Trying to pick up KiCAD (circuit diagram / PCB layout software) and it's already pretty clear that learning the workflow is gonna be a lot more challenging than actually laying stuff out.

@starkatt we use it regularly, want some help?

@Felthry Digikey has a tutorial series that seems pretty good, I just gotta make adjustments for it being a few versions out of date.

@starkatt ah, alright then! we heard digikey provides libraries for it now, too, which might be handy or could be awful, couldn't say

@starkatt something we found very handy: get a "gaming mouse" with lots of extra buttons and bind hotkeys to mouse buttons

@Felthry ooh I already have one of those, very good idea. Suggestions for most commonly used keys?

@starkatt I would suggest multiple profiles as you'll want one for schematic editing and one for pcb layout at least

for us, the "draw wire", "place part", "rotate part", and "cancel" keys were the best to mouseify

likewise on pcbnew, "route trace", "rotate part", "new fill zone", "increase/decrease trace size" were pretty handy

@starkatt I forget the exact keys we bound because we got a new mouse and have never gotten around to rebinding them to the new mouse (which has fewer buttons)

@Felthry y'know this software seems surprisingly good.

@starkatt It's _very_ good

and let me tell you we've also used mentorgraphics PADS which is professional software that costs something like $5k for a single license and it's. bad. very bad. by comparison

@Felthry Also good news, I can basically duplicate the circuit of Adafruit's lipo charger since they use the same IC.

I already own a couple of those chargers :)

@starkatt What IC in particular?