I have found and used the new settings for “board setup”, in particular “physical stackup”. I have also opened an existing project from version 5 that had 4 layers in version 6 and did not see any difference in board thickness, the default being 0.062" and the only setting available in version 5. However, if you start a new project and create a 4 layer (or more) board you’ll find out your default thickness is now 0.184". So it might not matter to some or be a total surprise for others if you have this made and it shows up this thick. But when using connectors on the board edge between pin rows (DB connectors, headers, etc.), they will no longer work and you will need to change the additional copper layers to get things to work again.
I appreciate the additional parameters to be able to get exactly what you want, however, I do wish there were presets or a checkbox that makes all similar layers the same, etc.
Has anyone else noticed this yet? Also, what’s with 10 decimal places and the open units where you can type in anything you want, close and open and it has converted it back to inches with a new value that has now also changed the overall thickness? I would prefer the same overall units of in/mm/mil realizing that existing values will have to be converted or even mixed units, just surprised it always converts to inches.
No complaints, just providing feedback and trying to understand the thought process and make the software better for everyone.
About the units…
Internally KiCad uses 32 signed ints representing nanometers, and other units are calculated on the fly.
You can switch between which units KiCad show with the buttons on the left side of the screen:
or with: PCB Editor / View / Units ….
This setting does not only control which units show on the PCB, but also in which units are shown in the dialogs such as the board setup.
In a lot of the entry boxes you can also enter simple formulas such as for example 5+3 without having to calculate 8 for yourself. You can also enter units in the not currently active units. If your units are set to mils or inches you can still just enter 3mm and KiCad will translate that to the currently active display units.
That adds up to 4.7mm, which is indeed quite ridiculous. The physical stackup dialog is quite new in KiCad KiCad V6.0 is the first stable version in which it’s used. It comes from the (apparently default?) thickness of all “Core” and “PrePreg” layers have the same 1.51mm thickness as for a 2 layer PCB. I guess nobody has written code to make these defaults configurable yet. In more general terms, settings and presets are still quite a mess in KiCad. I think you can save an (otherwise empty) project as a template, and use that, together with it’s settings to start new projects from.
But also:
I much prefer such settings to be wildly inaccurate instead of “almost right”. If they are almost right, you may overlook it, and when they are very wrong, you’ll go searching for how to correct it.
It’s quite easy to use [Ctrl + C] to copy an entry field, then the [Up] and [Dn] arrows and paste in another entry box. Not a real “link” solution but a reasonable workaround. You normally also only set these values once for a PCB project. I’m also not sure if the extra complexity in that dialog screen would be beneficial
Here’s my default view when I open the stackup settings. The unit is mm, that’s what I use everywhere. Notice the button with which you can calculate all the dielectric layers automatically. It opens a dialog, you give the total thickness of the board, and dielectric layers are calculated.
Gosh, I never noticed that Adjust Dielectric Thickness button before.
And it only makes my PCB 6nm too thin, and that is quite a bit shorter then the length of a human hair.
Thanks for the info. I did use cut and paste to correct the settings I needed to change but was not aware of the “quick change” units buttons that also change the units within this dialog. With that being the case the units for physical stackup should be outside the box of the actual values, however, you did mention that those inputs do take formulas, so now it makes more sense and is even more flexible even though I do not have a current need. Flexibility is always nice to have.
