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KiCad 7.0

kicad.org

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Re: KiCad 7.0

#31

Post by snovv_crash »

fest wrote: post #21
robomartin wrote: post #14

We said goodbye to Altium Designer when KiCad 6.0 was released. Altium’s focus and resources shifted towards trying to turn AD into a cloud-based tool. As a result the software people actually wanted to use suffered. Every release introduced a plethora of new bugs. Nobody really cared for cloud EDA. Altium thought they would be able to sell the company to Autodesk. This almost happened. In the end that did not happen…

> It makes no sense at all. Don't underestimate the inertia of processes at established companies. If a company maintains a part library, if the company has more than a few EEs- it can be a multi-man-month effort with potential for costly mistakes. I like KiCad very much, I use it professionally but I also was the one that mandated AD to be the tool everyone at $WORK must use for production designs a few years ago- s…

Absolutely, a couple years ago KiCad wasn't ready for production use, even just a day a month of hitting some obscure issue would have paid for the AD licences, never mind the better part libraries etc. Now of course you'll need the AD licences to work on old designs anyways so it's tricky to transition.

Over the weekend I put together a toy project with a few ICs and maybe a dozen passives in KiCad and I was amazed to see how easy everything was. And now with a new release they're probably fixing things I hadn't even been annoyed by yet.

Hopefully having an open codebase means we start seeing some nice autoplacement and autorouting trickle in from hobbyists and academia, like we've seen in the 3D printer slicers world.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#32

Post by weeeeelp »

Hnus wrote: post #30
qiqitori wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certain usage patterns that you will find all over the place, e.g.: - Current-limiting resistors - The resistor divider (two resistors between e.g. 3.3V and GND. The point between the two resistors will be between 3.3V and 0V, depending on the resistor values. Sometimes you need a certain voltage. For example to bias transistors. - Delays, using a resistor and a capacitor. The values will determine the dela…

Obvious but it never occurred to me that experienced person sees far fewer parts than layman when looking at the board, for expert its like yeah "file read there", "serialization here" (if I were to use programming analogy) but layman sees gazillion little parts magically working together.

"You get used to it, I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead."

Re: KiCad 7.0

#34

Post by amelius »

hales wrote: post #7

> Pack & Move Footprint Tool This is the biggest usability improvement on the list. Computers are good at menial sorting, humans hate it. For those not in the know: your nice, organised schematic gets turned into a randomly assorted pile of parts when you first open the PCB editor. Now imagine your board has over a hundred parts, including lots of duplicated copy+pasted bits. My workarounds have been to: 1. Number th…

I'm still on version 5 due to apt/snap issues, but what I miss the most is a way to place footprints of a group of components (as opposed to placing them all at once).

Re: KiCad 7.0

#36

Post by contingencies »

amelius wrote: post #34
hales wrote: post #7

> Pack & Move Footprint Tool This is the biggest usability improvement on the list. Computers are good at menial sorting, humans hate it. For those not in the know: your nice, organised schematic gets turned into a randomly assorted pile of parts when you first open the PCB editor. Now imagine your board has over a hundred parts, including lots of duplicated copy+pasted bits. My workarounds have been to: 1. Number th…

I'm still on version 5 due to apt/snap issues, but what I miss the most is a way to place footprints of a group of components (as opposed to placing them all at once).

I'm still on version 5 due to apt/snap issues

I'm still on 5.1.x as snapping is broken. Not apt/snap, but proximity snap. In 5.1.x the best way to place a group is to use https://github.com/MitjaNemec/Kicad_action_plugins 'replicate layout' (components and traces). See also, right click and Select ... Same schematic sheet (components only).

Re: KiCad 7.0

#37

Post by unxdfa »

junon wrote: post #29
aix1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When choosing how to lay out footprints during packing, does KiCad take into account electrical connections between them? (This does sound like an extremely useful feature either way, but I'm curious.)

It appears to now, yes. It didn't before. One of the bigger headaches (for me, as a beginner) was when you had bypass capacitors that need to be physically as close to an IC as possible. However, the two pins go to a voltage source and ground. According to Kicad, those could be placed anywhere on the board, and have no direct relation to the IC itself. This meant you had to carefully find each capacitor by its refere…

Trick is to print the schematic out, draw red circle around each "decoupling environment" and then group them on the board like that. Then place the connectors where the mechanical design demands them and move the groups where they need to go. Then do the signal paths, then the power routing, then the ground fill.

Kicad doesn't make that particularly easy but one of the big errors people make is at schematic capture stage where people chuck all the decoupling capacitors in their own sheet or separate net all across the power bus. They belong next to the devices you are decoupling on the schematic.

Canonical good example from the HP 3478A service manual: https://imgur.com/LQiAKtI

Re: KiCad 7.0

#38

Post by chuchana »

amelius wrote: post #34
hales wrote: post #7

> Pack & Move Footprint Tool This is the biggest usability improvement on the list. Computers are good at menial sorting, humans hate it. For those not in the know: your nice, organised schematic gets turned into a randomly assorted pile of parts when you first open the PCB editor. Now imagine your board has over a hundred parts, including lots of duplicated copy+pasted bits. My workarounds have been to: 1. Number th…

I'm still on version 5 due to apt/snap issues, but what I miss the most is a way to place footprints of a group of components (as opposed to placing them all at once).

Version 7 doesn't seem to have made it to either of those yet, but have you considered installing a newer version through an additional package manager like Guix or Nix?

Re: KiCad 7.0

#39

Post by unxdfa »

weeeeelp wrote: post #32
Hnus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious but it never occurred to me that experienced person sees far fewer parts than layman when looking at the board, for expert its like yeah "file read there", "serialization here" (if I were to use programming analogy) but layman sees gazillion little parts magically working together.

"You get used to it, I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead."

I think cockroach, beetle and woodworm is more appropriate when talking about code.

Re: KiCad 7.0

#40

Post by bmitc »

Interesting timing. Just yesterday I downloaded KiCad and CircuitMaker. I want to start documenting a circuit design, mainly piecing together schematics from application notes. Does anyone have any suggestions on any other options or what was selected among the options?
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