KiCad 2022 Year-End Recap and 7.0 Preview

[Chris Gammell] hosted the KiCad 2022 Year-End Recap with several KiCad developers and librarians. They went over what was bubbling up in the nightly releases of KiCad 6, what we can expect from KiCad 7, and even answered a few questions from the user community. During 2022, the KiCad project expanded both its development team and its library team. The project even benefits from a preliminary commitment of support from the CERN design office!

Improvements to the KiCad schematic editor include smart wire dragging that makes it easier to move components around in schematic diagrams. Components selected in the schematic now remain selected when switching to the PCB editor. Internal schematic documentation has advanced with font support, embedded graphics, and the inclusion of hyperlinks to datasheets and other reference materials. New features for PDF generation offer interactive files and links between sheets.

A new search panel in KiCad PCB Editor supports component search by footprint, pattern or text search. A properties panel allows you to modify the common properties of several selected elements. While a full-fledged auto-router remains outside of KiCad's scope, "push and shove" routing is faster and easier. An "attempt to complete" function routes a quick connection for the currently selected track, and "pack and move" positions all selected footprints nearby to simplify their placement as neighbors in the map layout.

The KiCad PCB Editor also adds support for using fonts and reverse "knockout text" which even works on copper areas. Bitmap graphics can be imported and scaled under the layout job as reference artwork. Private footprint layers can be used to place additional documentation in footprints. The Design Rules Checker (DRC) can now detect more layout issues, especially those that may impact manufacturability.

These are just a few examples of the impressive improvements we can expect with KiCad 7.0. There are also additions to circuit simulation and modeling functionality, a new command-line interface for script-based automation, ARM64 support for KiCad running on Apple silicon, and a host of new features. additions to the default library, including symbols, footprints, and 3D viewer models. .

The KiCad team offers several ways to support the project. There are always needs for additional developers and librarians. Financial contributions can be made at kicad.org. As users, we can run nightly builds, try to break them, and give feedback in the form of detailed bug reports. Community testing will help make KiCad 7.0 as solid as possible. The project team is also looking for open hardware projects to include with KiCad 7.0 as demos. For example, the StickHub project was included with KiCad 6.0 as a demo.

The official release of KiCad 7.0 is currently scheduled for January 31, 2023. In the meantime, let's take a look back at our January 2022 overview of the features that made it into the KiCad 6.0 release.