What will be 5.1.0, the current Nightlies, is already very stable and a better experience than 5.0.2, while file compatible.
I have recently production-upgraded from 4.0.7 to current stable 5.0.2 and I love it - never want to get back. Don’t see a single reason why 4.0.7 might be “better”.
If the 5.1 will keep 5.0.2 data structures, and a next milestone (6.0) is still 2years ahead - then why not to upgrade to 5.0.2 now? If you do things the right way, it’s almost totally painless (but one-way-ticket for the project files).
2 Likes
Can’t really think of many good reasons to keep to Kicad 4, t.b.h - the 5 upgrade has fixed quite a few bugs and introduced a lot of better functionality. The libraries are compatible and the remapping is a once only process. What problems have you found migrating from 4 to 5? If you have found that move tricky, you might have even more problems in a couple of years trying to go directly from 4 to 6. If you have a huge archive of old projects you could keep copies of these and a (virtual) version of 4.
If you want some videos about Kicad 5, can i suggest the following?https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/resources/design-tools/kicad
There are 17 videos here - with 7 of them specifically about changes between KiCad 4 and 5.
The TechExplorations course, I believe, has also been updated to include changes in Kicad 5 (I have no affiliation).
2 Likes
I highly recommend Dr. Peter Dalmaris’s “KiCad Like a Pro 2nd edition”. This video course covers KiCad version 5 using a Linux OS and his recipes are very informative. I paid US$9.99 for the course and any future updates to the course are viewable at no extra charge. Also the website has changed from <txplore.com> to <techexplorations.com>. My series of articles on reference designations has changed from <txplore.com/blog> to <techexplorations.com/reference-designations-for-electrical-and-electronics-parts-and-equipment>
–Larry
I can’t get them to change to KC5, they keep complaining there is more mouse clicks or something, so I’m stuck with their KC4 circuit.
The problem is I’m not an EE and I don’t make circuits, so it down to learn KC for 1 job and then probably never use it again. Basically I want to make a few mods to someone else’s PCB, ie more keepout on GND fill and double trace thickness’s, so it down to convert his to KC5, or go back to KC4 and see if I can change it.
I remember trying to learn KC5 in Oct18 from tutorials - I saw those Digi-key ones - , but KC5 was so new I couldn’t find a tutorial on how to add libraries.
Is the project public? I think the changes you are willing to make are not really complex and you should not have any big issue dealing with Kicad 4 :).
I took a quick look at the PCB and it’s fine in KC5, but SCH’s have the missing symbols.
The PCB has about 100 parts on a 100x100mm PCB, and noticed it has 0.010" traces and GND fill keepout. I don’t think I can home DIY etch 10mil, so it’s ether change them all to 0.020" and make copper GND fill 20mil keepout, or just send out the gerbers to be made as is.
When I get some time I will see if I can mod the PCB in KC5 and leave the SCH as is, because going back to KC4 is going to be a PITA.
I might be able to think up one or two reasons, but I’d be able to present fixes, that in my opinion, outweigh any thought of still using V4 instead of V5.
If the original project used symbols of the official library then you might want to install the version 4 library for working on it.
If the missing symbols are from the company libraries then you need to install them on your system.
The problem here is that you need to “install” them in the old v4 way for the remap dialog to find them. (You need to tell kicad within the .pro file where your symbols are to be found. It really is not enough if the libraries are in the sym-lib-table for kicad 5.)
A very detailed writeup is found in this tutorial. I suggest you work through both workflows to get a feel for what to do before working on a real project: Converting KiCad version 4 projects to version 5 (Remap a project)
Unfortunately I think this is all too above my experience level. Given a month, or three 
, I might know enough to get it done. But with only days of KC experience, and only 2 years of hobby electronics, it’s just not enough.
The KC4 PCB seams to work in KC5, I just have to figure out how to increase the GND fill keepout to 0.020" and change all the 0.010" tracks to 20mil.
As for the SCH, there is no chance. I get 111 warnings, and 2 parts aren’t even in KC5 lib. Plus it’s one of those master SCH dwgs that link to other smaller SCHs - which is not linking -, and that makes things even worse.
I don’t think I actually need the SCH, other than it would be easier to find parts, so maybe I’ll skip it.
I’m actually doing some content creating - this is sucking up time I should be spending on KC -, so maybe I should do a vid.
I did a vid.
You can see half way through the old brain click on how to navigate SCH, but at 4:30 I get to the part symbol thing.
Is it as easy as just picking a symbol from that tree file structure that looks the same, and manually changing 1 at a time? I think there is also reconnecting each part, which must be why I’m getting 419 warnings.
Just curious at the moment.
You can try my python script bom2csv and bom2sch to rename/correcting the symbols link quickly from spreedsheet program, then update the back directly to your schematic. It may save you time for this manual steps.
Chris Gammel has posted a series of videos on his contextual electronics youtube channel for kicad 5
I had already watched all of them, and he said he was going to do a KC4 to KC5 vid on it 1 month ago, but he still hasn’t. They kind-of aren’t real tutorials, more just hints, so I don’t know if it’s going to be that good any way.
I read the instructions but I get lost straight away, so that’s why I kind-of need a video. No one had said that my simple swap out symbols in my video is correct, so I guess it’s more complex than what I was thinking.
Edit:
After writing the post below I cloned:
paul@dualcore:~/projects/kicad$ git clone https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi.git
A bit later I found:
/home/paul/projects/kicad/rusefi/hardware/frankenstein/merge/rebuild.bat
with the remark:
rem Let’s wipe out all local libraries. Frankenstein does not have it’s own libraries!
This suggests you should be able to recover the schematic symbols from the default libraries if you follow Rene’s tutorial, but also look into the rebuild.bat file. It copies libraries and does other things.
I also found that “frankenstein” is apprently an old version and “frankenso” is the continuation
I think this is about my limit for how far I want to go for this project.
From your video it is clear you do not have much experience with KiCad.
I noticed (@ 0:52) you did not know what PROJECTNAME.pro means. It is the KiCad Project file. You should always open the project file in the KiCad project manager, and open schematic and pcb programs from there.
I am not sure what happens if you want to convert a KiCad V4 project to V5 without having the project manager open. Experienced KiCad users are so used to this step that @Rene_Poschl only mentiones it very briefly in his excellent remapping tutorial.
@ 3:10 you are looking at boxes with question marks. This means the conversion has gone wrong, and anything following that is pretty much useless.
Does your project have a [projectnam]-cache.lib? This library is important for conversions from KiCad V4 to V5, but because of the @#$%^&* resolution of your youtube video I could not see the directory listing.
From the screenshot below it looks like the schematic you are looking at is already for KiCad V5.
I thought about having a look at that project, and after a bit of clicking found:
https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi/tree/master/hardware
but there are so many sub projects there that I don’t know which one to pick.
I looked at a few projects there (frankso, frankenstein and CJ125_board), and neither of those have the [project]-cache.lib file.
That file is pretty important, because in it are all the schematic symbols. Without that file KiCad gets confused and can only show blank boxes with question marks in the schematic.
Your best hope is to install the old libraries (see Rene’s tutorial) before attempting the conversion from V4 to V5.
For anyone still following this topic, I hassled Chris and he made a video - https://youtu.be/mOM6bf5XFIw -.
It was exactly what I thought in my video, that you need to click on each box with a “?” and manually change the symbols 1 by 1.
If you need to change several you can use “Tools/Edit Symbol Library References...”. I just confirmed that it is in 5.0.2 stable.
Changed the thread title. This was nothing to do with V6
1 Like
When I get a chance I will fumble around and see if I can get it working.
The problem with newbies is they don’t yet know the terminology used in text instructions, so it all just gobbledygook. And that’s why I needed visual instructions to link what is being said with what it actually looks like.