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posted by cmn32480 on Monday December 07 2015, @11:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the new-and-improved dept.

Hackaday reports

KiCad 4.0 has just been released.

[...] If you've been using the old "stable" version of KiCad (from May 2013!), you've got a lot of catching-up to do.

The official part footprint libraries changed their format sometime in 2014, and are all now hosted on GitHub in separate ".pretty" folders for modularity and ease of updating. Unfortunately, this means that you'll need to be a little careful with your projects until you've switched all the parts over. The blow is softened by a "component rescue helper" but you're still going to need to be careful if you're still using old schematics with the new version.

The most interesting change, from a basic PCB-layout perspective, is the push-and-shove router. We're looking for a new demo video online, but this one from earlier this year will have to do for now. We've been using various "unstable" builds of KiCad for the last two years just because of this feature, so it's awesome to see it out in an actual release. The push-and-shove router still has some quirks and doesn't have all the functionality of the original routers, though, so we often find ourselves switching back and forth. But when you need the push-and-shove feature, it's awesome.

If you're doing a board where timing is critical, KiCad 4.0 has a bunch of differential trace and trace-length tuning options that are something far beyond the last release. The 3D board rendering has also greatly improved.

Indeed, there are so many improvements that have been made over the last two and a half years, that everybody we know has been using the nightly development builds of KiCad instead of the old stable version. If you've been doing the same, version 4.0 may not have all that much new for you. But if you're new to KiCad, now's a great time to jump in.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 07 2015, @12:04PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 07 2015, @12:04PM (#272854) Journal

    Just finished a day of PCB-ing using it.
    Not a big departure from the prev version, but it's indeed more mature.

    Unfortunately, still too fresh for a seamless user experience - a least on Linux.
    E.g.
    * text fields in "Preferences" dialogs react weird (backspace/del not working, need to cancel/close the dialog if you made a typo; safest way to populate the fields: use a text editor and copy/paste the texts you want)
    * select a block (components, traces, graphics) and delete it: all your not-yet-traced connections disappear

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Monday December 07 2015, @12:16PM

    by Gravis (4596) on Monday December 07 2015, @12:16PM (#272856)

    yeah... for whatever reason, kicad went with wxwindows which has never been very polished regardless of which platform you use. here's hoping they correct that mistake.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 07 2015, @01:02PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 07 2015, @01:02PM (#272866) Journal

      kicad went with wxwindows

      Ah... that explains.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Monday December 07 2015, @05:14PM

      by iwoloschin (3863) on Monday December 07 2015, @05:14PM (#272954)

      This isn't really something you can just correct. Ripping out the wxwidgets code and replacing it with something else (GTK? QT?) would be a huge undertaking, and would significantly detract from the developers' limited time. The UI needs help, yes, but I don't think wholesale replacing wxwidgets is the answer.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Gravis on Monday December 07 2015, @05:52PM

        by Gravis (4596) on Monday December 07 2015, @05:52PM (#272981)

        they actually have a significant amount of code dedicated to abstracting the graphics system which is needed because wxwidgets isn't totally portable and it's slow. i talked to some of the devs and they agree that moving to Qt (which has an already abstracted graphics system) would be great but it's unlikely because the people controlling the project like wxwidgets despite it's shortcomings.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @08:36PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @08:36PM (#273051)

          The fortune at the bottom of the page at the moment is particularly apt:
          Trust us, we know what we're doing. We may have no idea HOW we're doing it, but we know WHAT we're doing.

          -- gewg_