Newbie questions: What version of KiCad am I using? What is "footprint"?

Community
1

Hello KiCad community. I am new to electronics and KiCad :smiley: .

Today I installed KiCad on Fedora 22 by following the instructions on https://kicad.org/download/fedora/

I try to read “Getting Started in KiCad”.
From KiCad Help > Getting Started in KiCad:

Html or pdf help file
‘getting_started_in_kicad’
or
‘Getting_Started_in_KiCad’ could not be found.

So I downloaded http://docs.kicad.org/en/getting_started_in_kicad.pdf
But it does not say what version it is for.
What version of KiCad is that document for?

I want to make sure that the documentation and KiCad versions match.
Otherwise I will get confused being the newbie I am.

From KiCad Help > Version Information:

Application: kicad
Version: no-vcs-found-product debug build
wxWidgets: Version 3.0.2 (debug,wchar_t,compiler with C++ ABI 1008,GCC 5.1.1,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Platform: Linux 4.2.6-201.fc22.x86_64 x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Boost version: 1.57.0
         USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
         USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
         KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
         KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
         KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
         USE_FP_LIB_TABLE=HARD_CODED_ON
         BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON

So what version of KiCad am I running?

The getting_started_in_kicad.pdf assumes the reader knows what a “footprint” is, and there is no glossary.
What is a footprint?

Thank you for getting me started with KiCad.

2

I wholeheartedly suggest you have a look at these here - Chris did a very nice job:
https://www.youtube.com/user/contextualelectronic
It’s how I started with KiCAD after having a fly over the 101 tutorial that came with KiCAD 2013 stable…

3

What version of KiCad is that document for?

Kicad is rather lax when it comes to versioning, but judging by the date on the document (9 December 2015) it should describe the current version.

So what version of KiCad am I running?

You downloaded from a repo of “daily builds” (aka nightlies :), so you are running whatever build was current when you downloaded. Unfortunately the dailies don’t always get tagged with a version.

4

Thanks for the information Joan_Sparky and bobc. :smiley: