Post-v6 new features and development news

Off-grid wire-end and pin ERC warnings.

Overlapping pads Footprint Checker warnings.

PTH/NPTH-pad-with-no-hole Footprint Checker warnings.

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As of commit 0015574a The text variable ${SHEETNAME} now always represents just the name of the sheet (e.g. “Sheet 2”), whereas before if the variable was used in the drawing sheet (i.e. the title block), it would display the path of the current sheet (e.g. “/Sheet 1/Sheet 2/”).

A new text variable ${SHEETPATH} has been introduced which will be replaced by the path of the current sheet (e.g. “/Sheet 1/Sheet 2/”).

A note: users with custom drawing sheets will have to manually edit the drawing sheet definition if they want to continue using the sheet path.

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“Select Connection” in EEschema now works like U in PCBNew: hitting it again expands the selection.

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File > Revert for Schematic Editor and PCB Editor.

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Layer selection commands in Print dialog:

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DRC can now check for minimum copper connection widths

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Group editing of pins (and length now offsets the pin end in the expected direction):

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Bitmaps in the board editor and footprint editor. Assignable to a board layer such that working with multi-layer image sets is seamless:

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When assigning footprints to symbols, we now show the symbol pin names (if any) on the footprint pads.

image

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Graphical, canvas-based netclass assignments:

Project-wide netclass assignments have also been upgraded to pattern-based:

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Specification of shorting pad groups for net-ties:

Includes better support for Router and DRC for tracks entering and leaving net-tie pads, and for copper graphic items shorting pads not listed in a group.

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Hyperlinks in text elements, both to pages in the document and external http(s):// and file:// protocols

Example usage:

Thanks to @JeffYoung for finalising this in time for v7!

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Interactive pdf outputs from the Schematic Editor, covering:

  • Hyperlinks (both external and “to page” links)
  • Sheet symbols become hyperlinks to the page in the pdf that they represent
  • Intersheet refs have a pop-up that allows to go to the pages where the global label is present (this likely will only work in full featured pdf readers, like Acrobat)

Example below navigating a pdf generated with the Schematic Editor, opened in Acrobat DC:

Again thanks to @JeffYoung for getting the intersheet refs popup working (as well as other fixes).

31 Likes

A few tweaks to symbol fields:

  • You can now choose to display a field’s name in addition to its value on the schematic sheet
  • You can now disallow autoplacement for particular fields, which can be useful when you want to have certain fields always show up in a certain place relative to the symbol graphics, but others to be autoplaced.

Screenshot from 2022-09-04 13-27-33

image

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New Simulation Model Editor:

  • Reads models and their parameters from .model and .subckt lines in Spice libraries,
  • Has a pin assignments grid for easier pin ordering.


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Thanks to @qu1ck, PCM packages now support automatic updates (opt-in)

image

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Custom fields in library symbols are now shown in the Symbol Chooser and can be searched.

custom_fields

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KiCad now supports database libraries, which use an external SQL database to store information about components. There is some preliminary documentation for those who are interested in testing it.

If you aren’t sure you need a database library, you probably don’t! (at least, not right now). This is an advanced feature intended for specific use cases at the moment. The primary audience for this feature is companies and organizations who already use a database for part management and wish to integrate their existing database with KiCad. We are also interested to see what other types of users do with this feature, and may explore having more features built in to KiCad regarding data management in the future. In the near term though, part data management will be done through external tools.

18 Likes

Unroute Selected. Works on the stuff you want to unroute (tracks, footprints, pads, etc.)

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Attempt Finish Routing. Tries to automatically complete routing to the nearest ratsnest end. If it doesn’t succeed, will stop at the failure point to continue routing manually.

27 Likes