After a year of development, the release of the free PCB design computer-aided design system KiCad 7.0.0 has been published. This is the first significant release since the project was taken over by the Linux Foundation. Builds are prepared for various distributions of Linux, Windows and macOS. The code is written in C++ using the wxWidgets library and distributed under the GPLv3 license.
KiCad provides tools for editing electrical schematics and PCBs, 3D board visualization, working with a library of electrical circuit elements, manipulation with Gerber templates, electronic circuit simulation, PCB editing and project management. The project also provides libraries of electronic components, footprints and 3D models. According to some PCB manufacturers, about 15% of orders come with the provision of schematics prepared in KiCad.
Among the changes in the new release:
- In the editors of circuits, printed circuit boards and format frames, it is possible to use any system fonts.
- Support for text blocks has been added to the schematic and PCB editors.
- Added support for 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse, a mouse variant for navigating 3D and XNUMXD environments. Support for SpaceMouse-specific manipulations has been added to the Schematic Editor, Symbol Library, PCB Editor, and XNUMXD Viewer. Work with SpaceMouse is currently available only on Windows and macOS (in the future, it is planned to provide work on Linux with the help of libspacenav).
- The collection of information about the operation of the application is provided for reflection in the reports sent in case of abnormal terminations. The Sentry platform is used to track events, collect information about errors and generate crash dumps. The transmitted KiCad crash data is processed using the Sentry cloud service (SaaS). In the future, it is planned to collect telemetry based on Sentry with performance metrics that reflect information about how long certain commands are executed. Sending reports is currently only available in builds for Windows and requires explicit user consent (opt-in).
- Added the ability to automatically check for updates for installed packages and display a notification prompting you to install them in the Plugin and Content Manager. By default, verification is disabled and requires activation in the settings.
- Support for moving files in Drag & Drop mode has been added to the project interface, schematic and printed circuit board editors, Gerber file viewer and format frame editor.
- Builds for macOS provided for Apple devices based on Apple M1 and M2 ARM chips.
- A separate kicad-cli utility has been added for use in scripts and automating actions from the command line. Functions are provided for exporting schematic and PCB elements in various formats.
- In editors and schemes and symbols, support for primitives with a rectangle and a circle is implemented.
- Modernized behavior during orthogonal dragging (when offset, tracks are now only placed horizontally with corner transitions and character bypasses).
- In the symbol editor, the possibilities related to the pin table have been expanded. Added the ability to filter pins in relation to units of measure, change the units of pins from the table, create and delete pins in a group of symbols, view the number of grouped pins.
- Added a new ERC check to issue a warning when placing a symbol using an incompatible mesh (e.g. a mesh mismatch can lead to connection issues).
- Added the mode of rotation of the conductor exactly by 45 degrees (previously, rotation by a straight line or by an arbitrary angle was supported).
- Added "Do Not Populate" (DNP, Do Not Populate) mode to mark symbols on the schematic that will not be included in the generated component location files. DNP symbols are highlighted in a lighter color on the diagram.
- Added a simulation model editor ("Simulation Model"), which allows you to configure the parameters of the simulation model in graphics mode, without resorting to inserting text descriptions into the diagram.
- Added the ability to bind symbols to an external database using the ODBC interface. Symbols from different schemas can also be associated with the same shared library.
- Added support for displaying and searching for custom fields in the character selection window.
- Added the ability to use hypertext links on the scheme.
- Improved support for PDF format. Added support for the bookmarks section (table of contents) in the PDF viewer. Implemented the ability to export to PDF information about the symbols of the scheme. Added support for external and internal links.
- Added a footprint consistency check that detects footprints that differ from the associated library.
- A separate tab with a list of ignored DRC tests has been added to the PCB and PCB editors.
- Added support for radial dimensions.
- Added the ability to invert text objects on a printed circuit board.
- Added an option to automatically fill zones.
- Improved PCB tools. Added the ability to display an image in the background to make it easier to copy board outlines or footprint locations from a reference board when reverse engineering. Added support for complete unroute of footprints and automatic track completion.
- A new panel has been added to the PCB editor for searching by mask and filtering objects.
- A new panel for editing properties has been added to the PCB editor.
- Improved tools for distributing, packaging, and moving footprints.
- The tool for exporting in STEP format has been transferred to the PCB parsing engine that is shared with KiCad.
Source: opennet.ru