The last two years has been a particularly exciting time for KiCad, for users, casual contributors, and for the core developers too. Even so, there are many cool new features that are still in process. One bottleneck with open-source development of complex tools like KiCad is the limited amount of time that developers can devote for the project. Action plugins stand to both reduce developer load and increase the pace of development by making it easier to add your own functionality to the already extensible tool.

Sometime around version 4.0.7 (correct us if we’re wrong), it was decided to introduce “action plugins” for KiCad, with the intention that the larger community of contributors can add features that were not on the immediate road map or the core developers were not working on. The plugin system is a framework for extending the capabilities of KiCad using shared libraries. If you’re interested in creating action plugins, check out documentation at KiCad Plugin System and Python Plugin Development for Pcbnew. Then head over to this forum post for a roundup of Tutorials on python scripting in pcbnew, and figure out how to Register a python plugin inside pcbnew Tools menu.

Since version 5.0, we’ve seen an explosion of extremely useful action plugins for KiCad that have added some very useful bells and whistles. The KiCad website lists a couple of external tools, but there’s a lot of action happening out there, so we decided to round up some of the more useful ones.

via KiCad Action Plugins — Hackaday

Also, the Teardrop plugin could be useful for those using our 2 layer Flex service:

In the early days, PCB fabs often had yield issues due to offset drill holes, particularly on vias and micro-vias. One trick that PCB designers used to mitigate this problem was to use “teardrops”. The area around the pad or via that connected to the track was made into a teardrop shape, ostensibly in the hope that it would improve matters. Fabs nowadays do a pretty good job due to improved processes and accurate machines, so the jury is still out on the use of teardrops, but KiCad does have a Teardrop plugin, in case anyone wants to use it. Combined with smooth, rounded tracks, we’re guessing teardrops would be pretty helpful in the artistic PCBs department.