After making my tiny contribution to the "Getting Started in KiCad" guide, I sat down to actually read through it all. I've downloaded and installed KiCad 7.0.7 on my computer and followed along with the tutorial. I found it well-written and very informative for getting me started. Which gave me confidence I can make use of KiCad in the future.

However, the guide assumes the reader is familiar with the basics of electronic circuit design, and just needed to know where to find KiCad has organized various basic functionalities. My hypothesis is that six years ago I didn't have the prerequisite background knowledge and was thus unable to absorb the lesson to make use of KiCad. If that's the reason I stopped, I choose to celebrate my growth and hope things turn out better this time.

I don't know why I had the impression KiCad has tightly coupled symbols and component footprints, because the tutorial made it pretty clear that is not the case. Schematic editor and circuit board layout editor are two completely separate modules, and it's absolutely possible to draw a schematic with generic symbols (drawing from the stock "Devices" library) and never proceed to layout at all. This bodes well for my intended use of KiCad as a reverse-engineering/learning note-taking tool.

Reverse-engineering means I won't have control over what components are involved in a design. I certainly won't have all the technical data for all the components. Which is why I appreciated the tutorial covered how to make custom symbols and footprints, it's not like I can contact a supplier representative to request technical data. There is an official style guide ("KiCad Library Conventions") for library symbols and footprints. I skimmed through it, but I don't understand all of it yet. If I do continue using KiCad, I should revisit this link on a regular basis to better align my own creations with official best practices.

One feature I did not expect to find in KiCad was 3D rendering. Not just the circuit board layout, but a rendering complete with components populated on the board. To do this, a design must have 3D model data associated with the footprint and symbol for a part. The tutorial linked to the FreeCAD StepUp Workbench which bridges FreeCAD and KiCad. It allows using FreeCAD to generate 3D model data for KiCad part libraries, and it also exports KiCad generated 3D data into FreeCAD. The latter allows integrating a circuit board with its associated mechanical components. This sounds like a very powerful capability and, if I ever need such capability, I hope I remember to come back and take a closer look.

For today, I've learned enough to use the KiCad schematic editor for my own learning purposes.