Placing microvias in KiCad 5

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I must be missing something obvious, but I can’t figure out how to place microvias.

I’ve got ‘Allow micro vias (uVias)’ enabled in the Design Rules, with minimum diameter and drill size set as per my manufacturer. However, when I go to ‘Tracks & Vias’ I can’t make a pre-defined via dimension for microvias as it’s smaller than my mimimum via diameter and drill.

I can place a normal via and then manually change its size, but this is awkward and difficult.

How can I just place a microvia? Any help would be appreciated!

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Have you checked this thread? Was it of any help for you?

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I did, but CTRL-V just pastes.

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Did you press it while routing a track?

But V5 is very outdated, KiCad 7 will be released in the next days.

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I did a short test to see if the hints from “all about Circuits” work, and they work for me.

I did:

  1. PCB Editor / File / Board Setup / Board Stackup / Physical Stackup and then set “Copper Layers” to more then 2.
  2. … Board Setup / Design Rules / Constraints set the checkbox to allow micro via’s: image
  3. Start a track somewhere, and after laying a few track segments, press [Ctrl + V], which attaches a micro via to the cursor, and then place it.

And for me it works for me as you can see in the screenshot below. It also shows two normal via’s.

image
image1070×691 101 KB

I suppose you can only place mirco via’s while drawing tracks, however, once you have a micro via, you can also use [Ctrl + C] and [Ctrl + V] to copy and paste it. If you place it on a track from another net, it assumes the new net name.

In KiCad, you can also re-assign the hotkey if you wish, this is done in PCB Editor / Preferences / Preferences / Hotkeys

I tested this in KiCad V6.0.10.
KiCad V6 has many improvements over V6. There is three years of development effort in it, and after that a year of bug fixing. And as Jonathan writes below, KiCad V7 is now also just around the corner.

What are your reasons for using KiCad V5?

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Thank you paulvdh, the hotkeys assignment menu informed me that for some reason my microvia hotkey is in fact Alt+V. (??)

In any case, I can now bang down microvias with reckless aplomb.

I’m on KiCad 5 because my organization is on KiCad 5. An upgrade is long overdue but I’m at least going to wait until 7’s out before I push for the switch.

Thanks again!

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Going from 5 to 6 is quite a jump in user interface change.
From 6 to 7 will be a lot less

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