Post-v5 new features and development news

It does not help we default to anti-aliasing off… (also that other issue where the 4 modes aren’t actually meant for both pcbnew and eeschema at the same time)
The complaints shall stream in

@eelik Do you know if someone has released a tool to automate the translation of multiple V5 symbol/eeschema files to V6 new formats? I heard the “translator” logic is accessible with the GUI in 5.99 (Save as...) but I would like to know if this logic can be surfaced and maybe accessible via a Python script (like those in library-utils) so that we don’t have to translate file manually, one-by-one.

Thanks :smiley:

Responding to myself here, I’ve been told there will be a “Python API for kicad-libedit” available “soon” which will be the official way for translating schemas/symbol libraries from v5 to the new v6 formats.

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@cpresser posted more about the current state of the libraries:

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Now when most of the new features have been integrated there shouldn’t be so many UI string changes. If you ever have thought about helping translating the KiCad user interface to another language (or if you haven’t), now might be a good time to start. There was some discussion in KiCad v6 translation in 2020.

Nobody admitted using github plugin, so it was removed. See Opinions on removing GitHub plugin and there the link to the issue for more information.

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There’s a hidden feature: you can create filled circles and rectangles in pcbnew by changing the Line thickness to zero in the properties.

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10 posts were split to a new topic: Discussion about filled polygon implementation details

Due to certain problems in the implementation (see the discussion in the split topic and a bug report) all shapes (rectangle, circle, polygon) can now be filled or non-filled independently of the line thickness. For non-filled shapes the thickness must be > 0.

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There’s an ugly crasher in last night’s eeschema. I’ve already fixed it, but you might want to avoid last night’s build.

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eeschema: Hierarchy Navigator now shows page numbers and page number ordering is respected when printing and plotting. (introduced with MR 541)
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This builds on the sheet page numbers introduced by Wayne in commit 8ff51d88. It is more of a bug fix than a feature but added the convenience of showing page numbers in the hierarchy navigator.

Note that the ordering in the hierarchy navigator is first by hierarchy and next by page number so this means that the printing order could be different to the hierarchy order.

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Is it possible to create a dock from the navigator so it can be attached to the gui?

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That will have to wait until KiCad v7 as it is a new feature (you might want to “thumbs up” this issue to track progress)

However note that since MR 9 (by Franck Jullien) you can configure the Hierarchy Navigator to remain open as you navigate through schematic sheets. The option is in Preferences -> Editing Options -> Keep hierarchy navigator open

I do wonder if it should be defaulted to enabled.

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Seems a UI refresh with new icon showed up for latest Nigthly:

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The icons were not only cosmetical; there were licencing issues with some old icons which are apparently now solved.

EDIT: discussion about the new icons here: New icons in nightly.

FWIW, we don’t know of any licensing issues with the old icons. The trouble is that we don’t know that there aren’t any either. (In other words, we had no paper trail for some of them.)

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Please keep this topic clean form further discussions, you can start a new topic and call person by name if needed, like this: @Muz.

There is now a “Migrate Libraries…” button in Manage Symbol Libraries that will let you do a save-as-current-format on all selected rows (and update the table rows as well).

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It has already been told that some tools have alternatives which can be selected by a long press or mouse drag:

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I didn’t find a mention about hidden tool configuration options. Some tool buttons have a context menu (Right Mouse Button menu) with which you can change or find some options quickly.

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  • Router
  • Zone
  • Grid display (although this isn’t a KiCad “tool”)
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4 posts were split to a new topic: Version 6 tool alternatives and button context menus