Well then let´s keep aside the phrasing or wording. The first days I used Kicad (and that is not long ago, I just started using it as of V7) I wondered a lot about some design decisions of the devs. But just going a bit deeper and using more features and shortcuts I learned that obviously many of them led to a (what I think) is a tool with a rather good user experience.
Back to the color “feature” you don´t like: I like it because It makes every board that is a bis more involved than simple 2 layr boards easier to handle (visually). A lot of tools I used before had some similar features. I am 100% sure there will be future features and design decisions that I will find bad and which will “slow” my usual workflows - until I look at them and learn how to use them for my advantage.
A software, that does not allow the mindset to do breaking changes sometimes without carrying over all the possible options fom the past, is dead IMO
Only if you think of the previous behavior as “versatility” rather than “the way it was because nobody thought ahead to the desire to have different via sizes on different layers”
In AD, if the pads (vias) in all layers have the same geometric shapes, then the color is defined by the “Multilayer” layer. Something like the old KiCad. If the pads (vias) have different geometric shapes in the layers, then the color of the geometric shape is taken from the layer color, as it is now permanently in 9.0.0 RC1.
We have thought about it. The current consensus is that drawing vias differently depending on whether or not they have different shapes is not as good because it means that vias don’t have a consistent look.
So I’m really sorry that you made this decision. I already switched to 8.99 halfway through the year and this change surprised me at the end of September. I thought it would eventually be incorporated into the final version with some choice. Now I’m frustrated. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Unusual pad stacks are pretty common in industry, due to the use of flexible PCBs. I first came across small PCBs bonded to the kapton flexi in the mid 80s, so 40 years ago.
I’m not describing here that unusual pad stacks are not used or that PCB Layout should not support them. I’m describing here how these unusual pad stacks are displayed in PCB Layout.
If you want this feature, it is best for you to make a “Feature Request” on Gitlab. Others may upvote your request and the Devs may include this feature some time in the future.
I’ve made similar arguments myself in the past with other software products, but I’ve mostly changed my mind now. The downside of this approach is that you end up with more and more user-selectable options which, a few years down the line, nobody can quite remember why they’re there, almost nobody cares, and which just add to a mountain of miscellaneous settings which people - especially new users - have to navigate. Plus, of course, it’s another source of code bloat.
Sometimes it’s better just to bite the bullet and make a breaking change, or deprecate a now-redundant feature.
I would say … give it a chance. The one thing I hate is changes for change sake but this one appears to have some rationalisation behind it - assist in HDI where key information is lost.
Can it be improved? probably. Does it need improving? maybe.
It being different, it not being the same as $other_eCAD doesn’t mean it is wrong or it won’t work and there have been other key UI changes (eg icons) that have garnished emotional responses simply because it is visually different from what was there before BUT people got use to the change.
So … give it a try, if it really is causing actual issues then a constructive issue on why (and how to improve) stands a chance of being implemented, as long as it is objective and not subjective (its changed doesn’t count).
We’re open to considering changes to the behavior and might try some out to see if there is agreement with the development team that something else would be better. We are unlikely to make it an option to select between multiple different modes, for the reasons SteveT mentions.
Right now the major complaint I’m hearing is “it’s different from Altium”. It would be nice to articulate what the actual issue is with it being different from Altium (other than just having to learn two tools), because KiCad’s goal is not to just match the UI of another CAD tool in all ways.
I believe it’s best to leave it in place for now like other software firms this do with api changes, allowing everyone to continue working on their projects while benefiting from the new features. Then mark it as to be deprecated in V9, giving users time to adapt, and plan and tell for its removal in V10.
The answer is simple: Altium is a widely used program that sets certain standards among ECAD programs - whether we like it or not, besides, the way vias are displayed is logical - the same size - common color (yellow in kicad), other sizes - layer color - what is wrong with it that you couldn’t implement it? I have noticed a tendency in open source programs to introduce changes “in their own way” without looking at external, commercial solutions. Whether this is right is a topic for another discussion
