[Question] Evolution of KiCad through the years

[paulvdh]

Rene Poschl mentioned XOR rendering in:

Issues w/upgrade from 4.0.5 to 5.0.2_1

Can you share a board file with only the edge cuts layer? You could also use a current nightly build (Which will be released as version 5.1 within a week or two.) and run DRC as it now checks for correctly created edge cuts drawings (non self intersecting closed polygon) and points to problem areas. (The new snap to endpoint feature also makes it a lot easier to work with complex drawings.) This is simply how the modern renders work. The layer that is currently active is always shown as the …

I’m not sure if it’s really XOR, but if you look at the magnified screenshot below (from the V4.0.4 picture posted earlier) Then you can see that both green and red are saturated, while the overlap is a mix (average?) of the two colors.

In some ways this is superior to the transparency that is used now. When you apply transparency, it’s applied to the whole layer, which reduces overall contrast.

Edit / addition: This worked pretty well for 2 layer PCB’s but on 4 or more layer (see Spaceboy’s remark below) transparency may very well be a better solution.