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KiCad 7.0.0 Is Here!

baldengineer

game gear schematic drawn in KiCad 7

Just slightly over a year since releasing version 6, the development team has released KiCad 7.0!

Something like 1200 (reported) issues were addressed in this update. And an ASIC-load (get it? instead of boat-load...) of new features. You can start the KiCad 7.0 download here. While that chonker downloads, you can read the full announcement or check out my longer KiCad 7 write-up on the release.

My Favorite Two New Features (so far)

Colorizing nets in the Schematic editor was the last thing I played with before the official release. The above image is my version of the Game Gear schematic. (It's in the Bit Preserve GitHub repo.) To help keep the various buses straight, I assigned the bus and its nets to a custom color. I love using this colorization for address, data, and power rails. It really helps things to pop when looking at the schematic.

My other favorite feature is the properties panel in PCB. As the name implies, it brings the properties of an element to the top of the UI. First, it saves you from having to "edit" a footprint to adjust its settings. And second, it lets you group multiple similar elements together and change common properties. So, for example, you can grab multiple graphic elements and move them to a different layer without opening any other dialogs!

So, those were the two stand-out features that I really liked. But there are so many more.

Have you used it yet? If so, what do you like (or not like!) about KiCad 7.0?

  • I normally wait for the start of a new project to switch revisions, so this has to wait a little. And if I am really patient I wait for 7.0.1 for final fixes.  Yes I know that multiple version can be installed in parallel.

    Any word on backwards compatibility? It is probably stated in other articles, but it cannot be written often enough in as many places as possible.

    And yes, I am very much looking forward to using 7.0 Heart eyes cat

  • One feature that I liked is that the silkscreen text can now use different fonts. What I didn't like much of that feature is that there is no way to preview it. 

  • in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

    Version 7.0 opens Version 6.x (and 5.x) just fine, at least from my experience.

    Once saved, version 6.0 cannot (correctly) open version 7.0, even though the file formats are very similar.

  • in reply to neuromodulator

    Hah! I did not even realize that until now!

    I've only been using Veranda as an alternative font, which I didn't need to see a preview of.

    That does seem like an obvious omission.

  • Will definitely be updating to this version next time I need to use KiCad.  I was reading through the announcement notes and there's some good stuff in there.  Then I got to the "pack and move" feature and my first reaction was halleh-£$@%-lujah.  On many an occasion I would have sold a kidney for that in that past.

  • Oh. Finally! Good to know the news. I visit the KiCad forum too. But here I am getting this news for the first time. 

  • in reply to Andrew J

    That feature killed an AddOhms video I was wrong on. Slight smile

    I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I think it's going to be a big hit.

  • in reply to baldengineer

    Yes. I've been using the nightly builds of v7 for a while, and all my old projects open. No rendering issues. Schematics and PCBs look good. No issues making changes.

  • I've installed it too, (in parallel with existing KiCad 6, with backed-up projects and custom libraries) and it all went well, although I will need to manually locate 3D files for some of the custom library footprints, but I had expected to do that, and it's not a big issue. I'm probably not going to make a PCB with it until a V7 dot-release is available, but I figured it's still a good time to use it to try the new features.

    Several of the new features are super-helpful, especially in the PCB Editor area; the properties pane feature and the 'P' pack-and-move will both save a _lot_ of time.

    The quick line-finish tool (pressing F) in the PCB editor could same some time too. Also, the inverted ('knockout') text is great to see, although it would be nicer if you could draw any filled shape and have the text cut out the filled shape if the text is placed on top. Maybe that's very difficult to implement though, and there are other workarounds anyway.

    The only disappointment for me is that the footprint editor didn't see any properties pane-like functionality at all. It's a pain having to edit each pad one at a time, if a slight tweak needs to be made. Some CAD packages allow for a pad definition to be created separately (I don't like that method, but I can see why they do that). It would be nice to see some sort of solution for rapidly changing all similar pads in one go. Maybe there is a way to do this, but I've not found it yet, and I didn't see anything to indicate that the properties pane will eventually make its way to the footprint editor. 

    My current workaround is to delete all the pads and re-do them all if I need to tweak many pads, but it's not great.

    One other thing that would be nice to see is a way of truncating or splitting lines (e.g. PCB edge cuts, or silkscreen lines) where they intersect. Quite minor, but would be helpful occasionally.

    In summary, using V7 is just as easy as using V6, and from my perspective, it was great to see the new V7 features, particularly in the PCB Editor area,

  • in reply to shabaz

    The only disappointment for me is that the footprint editor didn't see any properties pane-like functionality at all.

    I did not realize it was missing from the footprint editor until someone asked in the KiCad Discord this morning. Currently, the only way I can think to bulk-edit pads is to copy/paste them into a text editor, then paste back. Less than ideal, but at least faster than going through each pad one at a time.

    I strongly suspect we'll see the Properties panel get implemented through the suite. It's current form feels more like a "let's see how to make this work" and then the next iteration will be more integrated throughout.

    Hopefully V7 is the start of the trend. An update of this size in about year will make version 8 very interesting to see.