The State of KiCad

Wayne Stambaugh from KiCad joins us to discuss upcoming plans and features for 2018

Hack Chat

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Wayne Stambaugh will be co-hosting the Hack Chat this week.

This Hack Chat is at noon PST, Friday, January 5th.

Time Zones got you down? Here's a handy count down timer!

KiCad is an electronic design automation (EDA) software that was developed 25 years ago. KiCad is popular because anyone can contribute to its development, there are many tutorials available to get started with, and KiCad's often utilized Gerber viewer.

KiCad's popularity is also driven by the fact that KiCad is free. KiCad tools include schematic capture, PCB layout, BOM export, and 3D viewing.

Wayne Stambaugh is the Project Leader at KiCad. He has a background in designing test systems for the entire hardware/ software product. Among others, he has worked on cancer imaging, analog IO, and capacitive tilt sensor product test systems. He is currently leading the effort on the KiCad product roadmap and is the author of KiCad's CvPcb Reference Manual.

This chat is about the status on the Kicad project, upcoming features, and is a place to make suggestions, air complaints, and add wish list items. Please leave suggestions and questions in the comments on this project.

Not a KiCad fan? We just spoke with EAGLE, here's the transcript. We'll be speaking with Alltium and others in the coming months.

TL;DR

What new features are on the roadmap for 2018?
What new features were developed since we chatted in January 2017?

Under the hood- how KiCad development works

How can a developer get started helping out?

Event Logs

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The State of KiCad Hack Chat Transcript 2/2
Shayna • 01/05/2018 at 21:07 • 0 comments

John T Eaton :can we add fpga/asic pin swapping to V6?

Wayne Stambaugh : @Chris Pavlina I could use some more full throttle help!

Chris Pavlina : sadly, day job :(
Sophi Kravitz : HEY EVERYONE

Garrett Mace : What up

Frank Buss : aww, you mean pin swap and gate swap is still not in v5?

Sophi Kravitz : Talk about Autorouting in the comments please, we'll do a chat just about that later

Chris Pavlina : lol

Sophi Kravitz : give @Wayne Stambaugh a chance to answer the backlog of questions

Linux HA : @Sophi Kravitz +1

Garrett Mace : 🤐

Sophi Kravitz : I see Garrett giving me a -1

Sophi Kravitz : ;)

Wayne Stambaugh : I wasn't even aware of @Dave Vandenbout's python tool. Sounds interesting. Hopefully we will get the schematic editor code swigged out to python for v6.

Chris Pavlina : oh god not more swig

Chris Pavlina : anything but more swig

Chris Pavlina : aaaaanything

todbot : heh

rene poeschl : lol

Ashlyn Black : @Wayne Stambaugh You mean the ability to remap the pins on eeschema symbols, ie so you can have a generic device symbol and then choose the specific device footprint at pcbnew?

Wayne Stambaugh : If not swig, I'm open to suggestion but I do want to get python support for the schematic edit an it's what I know.\

Wayne Stambaugh : @Ashlyn Black yes

Ashlyn Black: WOO

Garrett Mace : python in the user interface loop makes me sad, but i guess we have the CPU for it now

Chris Pavlina : I'm kinda kidding, and that's not really a discussion for _here_ I don't think. I think swig is a very poor solution to what we want, but beggars can't be choosers and all that

Sophi Kravitz : Wayne, are you ready for a new question?

Frank Buss :

Frank Buss : I used global labels to kind of faked pinswap, it works but native support would be so much better

Wayne Stambaugh : @Sophi Kravitz sure but I'm sure I missed some as the feed goes flying by

Sophi Kravitz : haha ok...

Sophi Kravitz : next question is from @Gerben Concerning OpenGL Canvas and Default Canvas in PCBnew. Why are they so different from one another? Some keyboard shortcuts are different. E.g. pressing delete on a trace segment in Default mode will remove the entire trace, while in OpenGL mode it only deletes the segment.

Both of them seem to have features that the other one doesn't. It's like having two distinct EDA. Is there a plan to merge them, or deprecate one of them?

NikiSchlifke : @Wayne Stambaugh

>Hopefully we will get the schematic editor code swigged out to python for v6.

You mean proper use of the schematic editor as a python library alas ``` from KiCad import schematic ```

Wayne Stambaugh : @Gerben the opengl/cairo canvas uses a different tool framework which causes some of the differences in behavior. There will be far less difference between the two for the version 5 release. The opengl canvas will be feature complete before the legacy canvas is removed.

Sophi Kravitz : combined questions from @W5VO and @Ashlyn Black: Deleting traces (or partial segments of traces) in OpenGL is painful since a bunch of little segments get created near pins - Are there plans to improve little things in the manual routing experience like this?

Ashlyn Black...
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The State of KiCad Hack Chat Transcript 1/2
Shayna • 01/05/2018 at 20:25 • 0 comments

Sophi Kravitz : @Wayne Stambaugh is leading the chat today! Welcome!

Sophi Kravitz : We have 97 people in here, this is amazing, more than every before ~!!!!!!!

Sophi Kravitz : hello new people

Wayne Stambaugh : I'm here if we want to get started bit early. Nice to see such a good turn out. Been keeping amused by some of the irc comments. Cool to see quite a few Eagle converts!

Sophi Kravitz : the way this works is that Wayne will be the main presenter

Sophi Kravitz : (starting a few minutes after the hour to allow people to get in here)

sheffieldnick : LOTS of KiCad fans :D

Chris Pavlina : yeah, and I still haven't got that coffee!

Chris Pavlina wait for me! ;)

Wayne Stambaugh : Please excuse my slow responses, my hands are killing me from all of the snow shoveling

Sophi Kravitz : we will pull questions from the comment area on the event page: https://hackaday.io/event/28713-the-state-of-kicad

nickoe : Why is KiCad so awesome?

Ashlyn Black : @nickoe because KiCAD

Wayne Stambaugh : @nickoe It's so awesome because all of the awesome devs

Sophi Kravitz : alright, let's get started! Welcome everyone to the first Hack Chat of 2018. we do these on Fridays, EVERY FRIDAY, normally at noon PST

Sophi Kravitz : @Wayne Stambaugh is leading the chat, Wayne, can you intro yourself and tell us a little about what's going on in the world of KiCad?

Wayne Stambaugh : I think most of you know I am the kicad project leader. As many of you probably know we are in feature freeze for the version 5 release.

Ashlyn Black : *vibrates with excitement*

blundar : feels like just yesterday that 4.0 came out.

Linux HA : Can't wait :-)

blundar : What's big changes in 5.x vs. 4.x

Sophi Kravitz : Please put questions in the comments section of this page @Carlos https://hackaday.io/event/28713-the-state-of-kicad

Twisted Pair in my Hair : What are the TOP-5 cool features of 5.0?

Tim : v5 will have S-expression schematic files! Woot! http://docs.kicad-pcb.org/doxygen/v5_road_map.html

Ashlyn Black : Can I maybe suggest peeps look at the roadmap? Lots of info about what features and when they're planned for.

Chris Pavlina : @Tim oof, that part of the road map must not have been updated.

Sophi Kravitz : Hi all the new people! WELCOME! Please put your questions here: https://hackaday.io/event/28713-the-state-of-kicad

Chris Pavlina : it won't.

Tim : :(

Ashlyn Black : oh man perfect timing, @Tim ^^

Wayne Stambaugh : Lots of changes between 4 and 5, spice simulation, step export, complex pad types, all new symbol library editor, completely retooled libraries, etc. See my fosdem 2017 presentation for the full list.

Chris Pavlina : yeah, sorry. that's a biiiiiig feature though, didn't make the v5 cut

nickoe : @blundar notes on new features http://dpaste.com/3ZHN88E.txt

Tim : how about here: http://docs.kicad-pcb.org/doxygen/v6_road_map.html

Sophi Kravitz : FIRST QUESTION is from...
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Discussions

alan_r_cam wrote 01/04/2018 at 03:05

It's been a while since I looked at Kicad - how well does it handle RF & Microwave ? Stripline and microstrip?

I can calculate trace widths and gaps elsewhere, given dielelectric and PCB thickness. My biggest hassle has always been TAPERED tracks. (Google: Tapered Stripline Transformer for some excellent examples)
Linear tapers are bad, but you can hack something together using the the flood fill tool (and not limiting yourself to 45 degree angles). BUT - I never managed to get a curved taper.
Is this possible now, with Kicad?

Are you sure? yes | no

Wayne Stambaugh wrote 01/05/2018 at 19:24

We now have support for complex pad shapes which is still a bit raw but very powerful. You can even use math operators to create pad shapes so it should be possible to just about anything you can imagine. I haven't had time to play with this feature yet but it is available. It would be nice to get some feedback on this. There still is no support for curved (arc) tapers but you should be able to approximate curves with line segments.

Are you sure? yes | no

Andrew Sowa wrote 01/03/2018 at 17:39

The biggest thing for me is when will the new 3D code be implemented in the main release. I use the nightly build because I want to share step files with ME's but this breaks the ability to share the board design with people using the stable build.

Footprint assist and new 3D viewer are great additions.

The measurement tool and graphic tools have seen a couple changes over the nightly builds. What direction are these going? Arcs are always tough to manage because of the center, radius, degree orientation. There is typically one side of the arc I have to manually connect by making a small line to fill the gap. If I don't do this it breaks some 3D features.

Is there plans on converting the wrml library to step once it is officially release? I have used CADexhange for some one off stuff but it is pay to get batch processing.

I don't get the whole power flag thing.

Where is help needed? Money, devs, librarians, etc.

Is there talk of a default BOM management tool? The 3rd party ones are good but can be hard to find if you don't know to look for them.

Are you sure? yes | no

rene poeschl wrote 01/05/2018 at 18:12

About step 3d support. Have a look at the freecad workbench kicad-stepup. https://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/ This works in combination with KiCad v4 stable. (And will stay useful for the v5 release as well.) If you have more questions about that, you can reach the developer of this workbench over at https://forum.kicad.info/

And about the 3d library: The new 3d lib (https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-packages3D) has already lots of step files in it. (This repo only accepts contributions that include a step file and a correctly scaled wrl file. KiCad Stepup is one way to create such a step/wrl pair.)

---

I assume with power flag you mean the one symbol in the power lib of the official lib called PWR_FLAG.

This is simply a symbol with one hidden pin that has the electrical type "power output". If you have a power input pin on a net but no other symbol with a power output pin, you can use this symbol to tell kicads ERC that this net is supplied with power using this power flag. (You need it if you supply your pcb via a generic connector symbol, or if you have a passive component in series to the supply.)

All other symbols in the power lib have one hidden power input pin. This results in the pin being a global label and requiring a power output to drive the resulting net. (All hidden power input pins are global labels. This "feature" was used in the old logic libs.)

---

I hope this answers at least some of your questions. (And i hope i don't break some rule by answering here instead of waiting for wayne to answer your questions.)

Are you sure? yes | no

Thomas Pointhuber wrote 01/05/2018 at 18:12

For step support, the new library contains for every model .wrl as well as .step models:

https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-packages3D

It's actually mandatory now when someone want's to contribute 3d-models to the official library.

(ok, a few senconds to late ^^)

Are you sure? yes | no

Wayne Stambaugh wrote 01/05/2018 at 19:30

Recently a change was introduced that will replace vrml models with step models when exporting to step. As long as the step file has the same file name (sans extension) in the same folder as the vrml file, the step exporter will export the board with the step models.

Are you sure? yes | no

oshpark wrote 12/28/2017 at 17:47

Very exciting!

Are you sure? yes | no

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