I try to force myself to use KiCad and I so far like it and have already done a handful of designs. But there is annoyances. For one thing, I always find discrepancies between "howtos" and help on the one side and how things really works on the other.
I cannot find a way to disperse (or unstack or what it is called in KiCad) components. You know, when you transfer the netlist, all components are on top of each other and its a real pain to grab components one by one and drag them on the side. The similar function, auto placement is not working either. In an older version of KiCad, I could use auto placement to disperse (that is what the function is called in PADS), but it was reaaaaaally slow and not exactly what I wanted. But, after upgrading the function is gone. My menus does not look like the menus in several FAQs and help on the net.
My version comes from:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/adamwolf/kicad-testing-daily/ubuntuCurrent version is: "Build 2011-nov-30". Thats kind of strange since I get updates fairly often thru ubuntus auto update feature.
Another really big annoyance is that the selection function now asks for "clarification" close to every time I tries to select things, components, pads, designators, values, etc. It used to work very well before, but now the usability seems to be more broken than fixed.
How do I disperse components? And a subgroup of components. For you that has worked with PADS, I talking about the function of selecting a block in the schematics with the connection running between PADS Logic and PADS Layout and then right-click in Layout and select "Disperse".
Edit: "Unpiling" is the term for KiCad I was looking for. According to this guide its quite simple. But the menus simply does not look anything like this in my reality. The "Glob Move and Place" isn't there. And anyway, when it was there a long time ago, you could only unpile all components or new components. Not blocks selected in the schematics. Its kind of an important feature on a fairly big design. The "Mode footprint" button does exactly nothing. There is a other buttons that doesn't do anything also.