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freerouting (freerouting)ECADConfidence: Medium

KiCad's Specctra exporter writes wire coordinates with six significant digits, so past 100 mm a track that starts on a pad centre arrives up to half a micrometre off, and Freerouting only connects a trace end at the exact pin centre. On the 20 PCBench reference-routed boards, the router started with 5,586 unconnected items on boards that were complete in KiCad. With the 1 um snap it is 427, and unrouted-after-one-pass went from 941 to 90. The KiCad bug, #25850, is confirmed upstream but not fixed in the versions people use.

Impact Analysis

Persona
Electrical Engineer
Team Size Impact
5x Multiplier
Prototype Delay
3 Days
Est. Annual Cost
$30,000
  • 1 user · 1 month240 min
  • Rest of team960 min
  • Rest of year13,200 min

monthly_minutes × 12 × team_multiplier ÷ 60 × $75/hr = $30k/yr

$75/hr assumed rate.

Annual team-minutes decomposed from the reported monthly inputs.

Evidence & Sources

1 Sources

Analyst Notes

From the Grok pain-radar digests, Oct 31-Nov 1 2026 (Oct 31 9:41 PM ET through Nov 1 7:41 AM ET digests plus the Haitch overnight edition). Verified live 2026-11-01: issue/PR read; title and state confirmed.