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KiCad 8 is here!

shabaz

Installing KiCad 8 went smoothly.

First off, I went to my KiCad project folder (e.g. C:\KICAD_PROJECTS), and made a backup copy of it. Then, I installed KiCad 8. At the prompt,I chose to import settings from KiCad 7:

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It started up just fine, with my previously opened project all ready for me in the new KiCad 8.

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After that, I went to my old KiCad folder in C:\users (C:\users\shabaz\Documents\KiCad\7.0) and copied everything there to C:\users\shabaz\Documents\KiCad\8.0.

Clicking on Symbol Editor or Footprint Editor will bring up a prompt. I selected the default:

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When in the Symbol or Footprint editors, the default KiCad libraries will be there, but any user-created ones won't be. I clicked on File->Add Library and navigated to C:\users\shabaz\Documents\KiCad\8.0\symbols or \footprints respectively, and selected my user library and it got added.

I've not tried much so far, but very happy that this feature is available:

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The above will speed up footprint creation/editing a lot. It is a feature that was sorely missing, it should have been added years ago.

I don't know if the 'teardrops' feature is new, but I've only noticed it now in KiCad 8:

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I'm looking forward to exploring more in the next few weeks (I will use KiCad 8 unless I hit any showstopper; I still have KiCad 7 and KiCad 6 installed, I think it's time to remove v6!).

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  • Interestingly, KiCad now supports complete EAGLE libraries!

    It supported EAGLE project import in the past (  Working with KiCad 7: Importing EAGLE files  ), but if you've built up custom component libraries over the years, they can be directly imported into KiCad now too.

    Here's how.

    Symbols:

    In the Symbol Editor, click on Preferences->Manage Symbol Libraries

    image

    Now simply click on the folder button, and choose your EAGLE .lbr file!

    image

    After a few seconds (or longer if you've got hundreds of symbols like me) the library will appear just as any other KiCad library, in the left side view.

    Here I've expanded on a multi-unit component, it's imported in perfectly as far as I can tell! I would probably replace the outline with a shaded box to match the KiCad style of component representation, and optionally change the signal types from 'bidirectional' to something else for better error-checking, but otherwise I see no need to modify anything here.

    image

    Footprints

    This is very similar to the procedure for Symbols. In the Footprint Editor, click on Preferences->Manage Footrpint Libraries and then look for the folder icon, but this time click on the drop-down shape next to it (I don't know why it's different but it's minor), and then select EAGLE. It's very impressive how many different CAD packages are supported in this list.

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    Once you've selected your EAGE .lbr file again, it will import in all the footprints. Looks pretty good!

    One thing to note, is that it won't import in the milling layer if you've used that for footprints. If there was a complex footprint I'd want to implement it from scratch in KiCad, since KiCad has much better custom pad shapes capability.

    image

  • in reply to shabaz

    Note: Personally I think it's better to re-create especially the footprints at least, since the 'KiCad way' is far better than the EAGLE way for all complex footprints. Plus, it's good to learn how to do it all in KiCad, rather than relying on old EAGLE libraries. But nice to know that there is is import capability.

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  • in reply to shabaz

    Note: Personally I think it's better to re-create especially the footprints at least, since the 'KiCad way' is far better than the EAGLE way for all complex footprints. Plus, it's good to learn how to do it all in KiCad, rather than relying on old EAGLE libraries. But nice to know that there is is import capability.

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