In the stone age (eighties) I used a dos based PC Cad, which used function keys as shortcuts. I thought then that they were logical, and at least the user didn’t need both hands and a foot to press the necessary keys. Using that program was fast, too. (After the learning curve.) Some logic could be used in Kicad also. Too bad Microsoft missed and messed with function keys.
6.99 addresses this.
There are over 500 commands that can have hotkeys assigned or changed, all to the users requirements.
6.99 is worth downloading and exploring.
What about fileformats. Are files saved from 6.99 compatible with 7.00 and 6.0.10?
Files will be compatible with 7.0 when it gets released, but not with 6.0.10. KiCad is always forward compatible, but never backwards compatible. When something has changes in the file format that is, and usually something is added between major versions.
I’m confused too somtimes, but is is actually the other way around. KiCad has backward compatibility (It can read older file formats), but it has (as of yet) no forward compatibility.
Overall I am pretty content with KiCad’s shortcut keys. Sometimes they change (for example the x and y keys for mirroring schematic symbols was changed in V5 → V6 transition), and that takes some getting used to. There can be no progress without change. The only thing that still gets me sometimes is that starting a wire in the schematic editor has shortuct w, while starting a track on the PCB has shortcut x. There is a cheat sheet with shortcut keys (but it has not been updated for some while as far as I know). Printing it out (and making some notes on it) may help with learning KiCad. And if there are some shortcuts you really can’t get along with, there is always the possibility to change it in the preferences.
Thank you for correcting me! I should’ve read my own post before sending. I probably meant that the file format is compatible with furure versions, but it came out all wrong.
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