halachal,
here is the discussion that I read through trying to figure out how to see layers.
post 23 talks about the legacy vs opengl visualizations.
That may be true. I donât know what it would require, though. There are also some limitations due to supporting old (2.0?) OpenGL.
bitwise operators were added to GLSL in OpenGL 3.0 (2009)
so I guess the question is why KiCAD is pinned to a version released in 2004âŚ
You should file an issue and report your findings. I donât know if there are any real OpenGL experts in the development group so that they would have thought about all possibilities, or if there are some other obstacles.
Because KiCad is dedicated to support old hardware. The year of the specification is of course earlier than the hardware which doesnât yet support later spec.
(Man this conversation must be difficult to follow to those who donât know the order of our messagesâŚ)
I really hope thatâs not how the developers think. If someone really canât bother to upgrade their GPU for a decade, thereâs always software openGL.
Leaving aside the lack of features, the modern pipeline and programming style is almost unrecognizably changed from OGL2.0.
The old XOR made a lot of things visible on the PCB, but all those colors also had disadvantages and even though you could see a lot of things, figuring out what was what was not always easy.
There are 2 reasons why the XOR way feels better.
- You get used to what you see, itâs a psychological thing.
- The current way opacity is handled is very simplistic in itâs implementation.
Instead of holding on to the XOR, what other tools are there in OpenGL which can help in making boards better viewable? How do other PCB programs handle this?
To give some contrast. Here is a different approach:
I would have to agree that, while I do think supporting a wide range of hardware is good, and even necessary, there comes a time when it can probably be assumed (whatever negatives go along with that) that there will be a limit to how old things should be.
First, as a pcb designer, my systems go through an upgrade cycle depending on how much support and features are needed. For example, win7 is done, so hardware needs to meet specs for win 10, and even if the hardware was good on win 7, the new software versions require win10, and that typically means better hardware. Although Linux allows wider hardware, the current new releases do much better with newer hardware specs.
For a hobbyist, I donât think kicad should require an i-7 to not bog down (and I have never had a problem on any hardware I have used kicad 4 on), but I would imagine most computers are pretty new.
That said, kicad does keep some older versions available - and should, if the goal is usability for lower hardware requirements.
I would rather hear âto use on a dual core p2 computer, download kicad 4â than to suffer development decisions because everyone has to fall to the lowest hardware possible.
If the graphics cards are the limiting factor, set a minimum requirement of some baseline graphics available - some intel hd chip that comes in a medium budget laptop?
And thinking of the requirement side of kicad, Iâm wondering if the legacy mode being gone from Ubunty20.04 might have to do with Ubuntu dropping python2, and maybe legacy mode needs python2?
I am using KiCad on a 12 year old Dualcore (E6550) with a passmark rating of around 1500, and with Linux Mint 19.3 XFCE it still works well enough that I am in doubt when I would be going to buy a newer PC. I did upgrade my pc with about the cheapest video card I could find some years ago (Nvidia N210) which was a great improvement over the original, but abysmally slow for todayâs standards.
For KiCad itâs still fine. FreeCAD has become very slow 1 or 2 years ago. FreeCAD takes over a minute just to start up, which is quite horrible.
On the other hand, Iâve heard Wayne Stambaugh talking of people requesting more copper layers because they are nearing the KiCad limit and boards with several thousands of components. For those boardâs you will need fast hardware, and speed for KiCad is a mayor issue.
In this thread:
qu1ck wrote:
Itâs dropped on linux distributions where gtk3 is the only option. Legacy toolkit is only supported on gtk2.
I would imagine those designers would be using the latest video cards to get fast rendering and operation.
It would interesting to see the fantastic features a âlatest hardwareâ edition of kicad would have.
paulvdh,
Thanks for the link. I wasnât sure why the legacy option disappeared.
For around EUR700 I can buy components for a PC with a Passmark rating of around 19000, more then 12x faster then my current PC.
- EUR180 Ryzen 3600
- EUR150 RX570 or XR580 Video.
- EUR150 16GB Ram.
- EUR110 Mobo.
- Miscellaneous components, SSD, Power supply and other stuff.
The fastest âregularâ PCâs have a passmark rating of around 62000, more then 3 times faster than the top of what I would consider purchasing.
Oops. The top just jumped up to 81000âŚ
Also, modern graphics cards can cost upto several thousand EUR, and you can put 4 of them in a PC.
I would not be surprised if a completely maxed out PC costs EUR30000 or more. Itâs completely mad.
Iâm no expert, but what about this:
âSupport for the logical pixel operations in RGBA mode was introduced in OpenGL 1.1.â
call glEnable(GL_COLOR_LOGIC_OP)
CALL glLogicOp(GL_XOR)
Mentioned here
Edit: In Cairo it is called âcompositing operatorâ (âblendingâ is something else). The mode here is probably CAIRO_OPERATOR_XOR but there are other interesting ones confusingly referred to as âblend modesâ such as SCREEN or MULTIPLY that might be useful depending on whether the background is dark or light.
HiGreg,
Iâm not an expert either, but that does look promising.
Thanks for doing some research.
As far as I remember from the glimpses of discussions, KiCad wouldnât benefit much from newer graphics hw features. I vaguely remember a discussion about fixing or adding something small, very small thing, which wasnât finally considered because of the OpenGL version limit. IMO the main points to consider are
- supporting existing hardware on which KiCad already is running for many people
- the feature benefits (which are small)
- the amount of work to be done to reach new nice features
- the amount of manpower to do that work
Taken these all together, it probably isnât just worth of it to update the OpenGL requirement.
But if anyone really delves into the issues and comes up with working solutions (working code) to showcase the benefits of newer OpenGL, it might be considered.
Remember also that itâs already the case that KiCad has more than one graphics canvases using different technologies. Anyone could code a new one with different visual properties as long as the old ones define the functional features and the new one is optional. I canât promise for the project, but if someone would really do all that work, it might be considered for inclusion. I donât think the current developers are willing to do all that work, though.
BTW, if someone is inspired by this thread and starts coding, I have other wishes, too. I have thought that OpenGL possibilities are underutilized. The view is now completely static. I believe the user might benefit from some animated objects. I donât mean moving things, but effects like flashing or pulsating (changing between normal and highlighted color over time).
Anyone with access to other graphically-advanced packages deal with the issue of multi-layer visibility?