I just upgradeded from version 7 to version 8 and was disappointed to see that it doesn’t seem possible to disable realistic rendering in the 3D viewer after the upgrade. I really liked this feature since it makes it much easier to see the tracks than realistic rendering.
Is it possible to add this feature back or was there any particular reason for not having it?
Attached is a screenshot from the older version to make it clear what I’m refering to.
Have you tried turning off the solder mask layer in the appearance manager on the right?
Things are also changing, You can set the color for copper layers also in the right side appearance manager.
Thanks for the suggestions. I tried to change the color but the contrast is still much worse than the previous behaviour. Hiding the solder mask gives better contrast but no color queues about what layer or side I’m looking at.
For now I’ll just downgrade to V7 instead. I was just curious why the feature was added for V7 and then removed in V8.
That seems a bit silly if you do it just for this.
You ca double click on the small squares in front of the layer names and assign any color to the layers that you want in the 3D viewer.
Below a screenshot of goldish tracks on a dark PCB in KiCad V8:
Or cyan tracks on a white background:
There is a known bug that different colors for different copper layers currently does not work in the 3D viewer. This has been fixed in the nightlies, and there you can select a different color for each separate copper layer. In KiCad V8, it just uses the last selected color for all copper layers.
As far as I understand you want to keep the mask layers enabled but with more contrast. This can be achieved with less opacity of the mask colors.
The layers are drawn in physical order. So the mask will hide the copper layers according to their opacity.
before/after
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