Every now and then some user has been confused by a zone viewing option which shows boundaries of zones, including strange horizontal lines (see for example here and here).
That view mode is now behind advanced config and we have one button less in the left hand toolbar by default.
I don’t remember if these two features have been introduced: Board Characteristics and Stackup Table which can be added to a pcbnew layer. They are both groups of items, populated with information gathered from the board. Stackup Table naturally needs the physical stackup in the Board Setup. Add these from Place menu.
We are still waiting for two major features, the new python API and the Content Manager. The latter can be tested if you can use git and compile KiCad yourself, see https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/merge_requests/841.
Despite the latest “we are almost there” update about the python API we haven’t heard about it ever since. Well, the last 10% is always the most difficult… But in any case it looks like the more pessimistic estimates about the release schedule were correct. There’s still hope to get v6 this year, but honestly, those two features are both pretty large and need testing, so it’s probably not only about integrating them to the master codebase and fixing some small bugs, although they should be independent from the rest of KiCad and therefore not cause headaches for those who don’t use them.
Otherwise the state of 5.99 looks relatively good to me. Judging by the posts in the forum 5.99 is pretty popular already amongst courageous users. Please join them, test and report bugs.
Speaking of which, the button in the 3D Viewer’s color settings to copy in the Board Stackup colors was pretty kludgy, so it’s been replaced with a radio button to just use the stackup colors.
It has now been merged to master. At the moment it’s behind a config flag because it’s not fully featured yet, so if you compile, run cmake first and enable KICAD_PCM. You will also see KICAD6_3RD_PARTY environment variable in the Configure Paths dialog, the packages which can now be tested will be installed there. The footprint library must be added to a library table manually. As was said, it’s not ready yet for full user experience.
Discussion should go to the dedicated thread.
Gerbview has now XOR viewing mode a.k.a. differential mode or compare mode. Overlapping colors are blended using certain algorithm, so difference between two layers is easy to see. Screenshots can be found in the merge request.
Notice that this is only for gerbview, not for pcbnew. The latter once had the old legacy toolset/display engine which showed colors XORed and some users have wanted it back, but with other enhancements, for example more detailed settings for transparency, it shouldn’t be necessary for productive work.
EDIT: this isn’t really a new feature, it existed in v5, but was removed probably when the legacy canvas was removed (correct me if I’m wrong). The implementation in 5.99 is different.
Importing of Eagle netclasses and clearance matrices.
Maybe more of a bug fix, but it might be useful to some:
Some slight improvement to the length tuner / diff pair tuner. Now you can choose which side the meander is placed on by moving the mouse cursor to the other side of the tuned tracks:
zxMOFm0nBo
Quoting Seth (https://www.mail-archive.com/kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net/msg39763.html):
Previously, KiCad had default paths for schematic symbols in
/usr/share/kicad/libraryand for footprints in/usr/share/kicad/modules/(Windows users found these at %{KICAD_PROGRAM}\share\kicad\library and %{KICAD_PROGRAM}\share\kicad\modules)Starting with tomorrow’s nightly build, we will be installing these to
/usr/share/kicad/symbolsfor schematic symbols and/usr/share/kicad/footprintsfor layout footprints.
Depending on your setup, this may require some manual intervention after an update. New installations should work by default.
As part of a general cleanup to the UI of the Create Array... tool, a new option has been added that automatically assigns the next available reference designator to the newly created footprints (it works in the same way as Paste Special... -> Assign unique reference designators)
The cleanup was mainly to remove the clutter in that dialog when running from the board editor: none of the pad numbering options were relevant.
The way it should work is that if you have a block to array like below:
J1 J2
J3
It will create an array with the reference designators something like below (dependent on other footprints on the board not having those reference designators already)
J1 J2 J4 J5
J3 J6
J7 J8 J10 J11
J9 J12
A possible workflow for getting this working would be:
Paste Special... -> Assign Unique reference designators (they will need to be pasted as many times as required).Update PCB from Schematic... (F8) selecting Re-link footprints to schematic symbols based on their reference designators.This option should be available in the next nightly run.
Ref commit: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/commit/a79a2212573ab001402b01dcd2bf7a71ecc376cd
Cool! I’ve been waiting for something like this for years!
Until now, CTRL + E could be used to open the editor of the current symbol or footprint (below the mouse).
Since yesterday, CTRL + SHIFT + E can be used to open the symbol or footprint it in the library editor, instead of editing the current symbol / footprint.
Thanks Seth! https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/9454
We finally got some information about the v6 release schedule! Quoted from Wayne’s message, https://www.mail-archive.com/kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net/msg39781.html :
The annual stable release policy sounds exciting.
https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/rules-guidelines/release-policy/
The Plugin and Content Manager has been enabled by default and will start showing up in nightlies tomorrow.
There is work-in-progress documentation aimed at plugin/content creators on the dev docs site. Adventurous plugin authors can already start submitting their work to the official repository by following the guidelines there (take a look at the things already in the repository for examples).
There are some things to be aware of when testing:
I am really happy to see PCM in KiCAD! However, I am worried about the plugins’ future in KiCAD 6. In the current nightly, there is API regression that affects several plugins in such a way they stop working. And without fixing the API, they will not be available for v6.
Could you provide updates on the Python API v6? I raised my concerns on the mailing list about a week ago, but I received no response from the developers (see https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg45379.html). The regression was reported about 9 months ago and we were asured that it will be fixed before release. However, I am really getting worried as it is 7 days until RC.
I have a question regarding PCM - what about plugins that have third-party dependencies (i.e., Python libraries). Does the installation process via PCM takes this into account? Currently, it doesn’t look so. Is it expected that the user will have to install such dependencies manually?
Can’t you just include all dependencies in the plug-in? The website linked above states that
The contents of the
pluginssubdirectory should include any Python source files and resources required by your plugin