I’ve used kicad for a few years after the license for Eagle changed.
I found a few serious issues lately with the latest kicad 9
It used to work perfectly but not anymore.
For some bizarre reason the export to SVG has been removed. The way around is to use the plot mode.
There are two very serious problems with this
1-If I accidently save the setting, next time I have to reenter my gerber information
2-The plot to SVG creates several files which makes it completely useless
The use here is to create a stencil. With two files the surface mount part are not at the right place with the edge. You load the edge file first and then the file for the surface mount pads, that one is centered which is nonsense. With the other way that was together at the right place as only one file was generated.
I use inskscape to create the file with imported SVG files I then use Silhouette Cameo 4 software on my mac to create the stencils.
Till KiCad V7 to make my documentation files I was plotting separate layers (each layer with edge cuts added to it) and merged them using Inkscape.
I shown such file here:
In Inkscape I opened copper layer selected all and changed it to gray 10% and making page size being equal to whole drawing. Then I imported other layer(s) setting their X,Y to 0,0 (thanks to having edge cuts at each layer with the same top left corner (if needed I added something very short and thin line there to be invisible).
It was my method defined with KiCad V4, but those time refernce point had to be at bottom left.
With V8 I get my pictures directly from KiCad. I use Inkscape only to make output picture size be equal to my PCB (3 hotkeys in Inkscape).
I have described it here (press ‘Read more’ there):
I think in V8 SVG export and plot to SVG are exactly the same functions. I can’t check it now as don’t have KiCad here.
I didn’t moved to V9 yet, but may be what I have written will be helpful.
The documention sucks in that regard, I had tried tons of different approaches with no success.
On one of my boards it would export thru holes as well. I had to edit the file with inskcape to remove the thru hole parts.
I still think that removing the option with file export was a moronic decision, I prefer the old approach so I will have to make copies of the pcb board just in case I accidentally save the settings.
[from edited-away reply] I don’t understand the logic of destroying the functionality this way.
Because it was an entire, separate code path based around hacking the older printing interface (which is separate in the code) that was basically providing an inconsistent and less-capable brother to the plot function, and adding substantial technical debt into the bargain. Since the plotting system is what drives the jobset system, that is what was standardized on since that allows SVG output to have the full suite of plotting options.
If there’s a function that’s missing, that may well be addressable as a regression, given an adequately detailed report.
John explained quite well why the old export was removed, and earlier the use of jobsets was mentioned (which is apparently new to you).
There is a lot of development happening in KiCad, and sometimes this mandates a bit of adjustment from the users. When features move, or get re-implemented, then the first iteration is often “good enough for generic work”, but it is possible that some niche but very nice (to you) feature is missing in the “new way” of doing things. You’re always free to create a feature request for this on gitlab.
I can’t go back to older version, software is not forward compatible. Also I need to keep the same version on my misc OS. Most of the time I use gentoo and sometimes archlinux. I have good control on gentoo but not as much on archlinux, they are ways around on archlinux but that may create more problems which I do not want to deal with.
I will likely do a feature request when I get some time. Right now I am working on 7 designs I just received from China, $35 plus $37.56 trump tax and broker fee.
I’ve had issues with the plugins for inskcape on both gentoo and archlinux so I bought the business license for Cameo 4 Silhouette to get support for SVG files and others. It doesn’t support import of gerber files.
I haven’t tried windows. Since I retired my cat is the only one using my windows laptop, it must keeps his little butt warm on cold days or he sees it as a good spot to watch me work.
Is there issues like that with this program?
On Linux the issue I had was that it didn’t cut thru most of the time so I got sick of it and bought the Silhouette software which works perfectly on the mac. The mac uses the bluetooth connection.
Knowing this you should not go to newer version before checking it.
Following forum I found a serious problem making me to plan to move to V9 when I will be having enough time for conversion:
I had issues with version 8 and version 9 seemed to fix those. Because of the trump tariffs I waited to order my boards so I didn’t notice the issue with the SVG exporting until now.
Before you move to version 9 you need to be aware of two very serious bugs
1-Often crashes when running the first time that day. Sometime it crashes twice in a row.
You may have random crashes so make sure you save files often.
I thought that it was just a problem on Arch Linux but found that I have also the problem on gentoo.
I haven’t tried the one on the mac yet. I need to see if there is an arm64 version.
I find the mac very usefull for my arm64 boards dev. I have debian in vmware fusion.
2-It is impossible to delete X items from Kicad. You can edit the file (with kicad closed) and delete them in the file. You first check the position first so you delete the correct one. You could delete them all and then later put back the ones you want. It may crash when first reading the file after than.
V9.0.0 and V9.0.1 is not very good at this time. Especially with the first few bug fix releases (third digit) after a mayor release (first digit) KiCad has quite a lot of bugs which get discovered when a lot more people start using the new version. They get fixed quite quickly, but those bugs will stick with you if you don’t update. The current stable version is: KiCad 9.0.2 Release | KiCad EDA You can expect a new bug fix release every 4 to 6 weeks.
