I have a lot of questions and comments relevant to this thread.
Looking @Anool’s posting above, I see that the 5.1.4 build for Ubuntu 18.04 has Python3 enabled. Mine, for Ubuntu 16.04, doesn’t (or so “About” claims). Why? Does it mean I need to take the risk of upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04?
I want to point out an ingenious subtlety in @maui’s RF tools: In the schematic, they are used as flags between connected nodes. This circumvents the problem of having a two-port copper “component,” which would require a different net on each port, causing the DRC to flag an error of shorted nets. However, the issue of grounding traces which are “hot” on the other side (which are a significant fraction of the wavelength) persists in RF design. As I mentioned in this forum before, since the DRC only thinks in DC, it cannot accommodate RF design. Take the printed F antenna as an example (look for “PIFA” in wikipedia): The bottom of the F is electrically “hot,” while the end of each arm is grounded. Perfectly understandable in terms of RF, since each dimension is a significant part of a wavelength, but the DRC’s “DC-only” thinking would flag a nonexistent error (shorting to ground). Probably a zero-length component would do, but how would it be visible in the layout? This problem is not unique to KiCAD.
I installed the KiCad action scripts, but only the ViaStitching plugin shows up. Here is my ‘~/.kicad_plugins’ directory structure:
And here is the directory structure of ‘~/.kicad_plugins/kicad-action-scripts’:
‘ViaStitching’ and ‘CircularZone’ are links to the original subdirectories under ‘./kicad-action-scripts’. All installed plugins except CircularZone show up.
Concerning via stitching, I think it fails to function when I tell it to place vias only within a zone (selecting the last option on the bottom only). Otherwise, it seems to work. In general, if I had a coplanar waveguide (see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coplanar_waveguide) and I wanted a “via fence” to ground extending only a certain distance from the hot trace, is there any easy way to do that? It would be something like using the trace to define a path in Inkscape.
Finally, here is the information about my KiCAD 5.1.4:
Application: KiCad
Version: 5.1.4-e60b266~84~ubuntu16.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.2
libcurl/7.47.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux 4.15.0-65-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
wxWidgets: 3.0.2 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 2.24
Boost: 1.58.0
OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.8.0
Curl: 7.47.0
Compiler: GCC 5.4.0 with C++ ABI 1009
Build settings:
USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
KICAD_SPICE=ON