KiCAD 6.0.7 Released

[johnboxall]

The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest series 6 stable release. The 6.0.7 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the previous release.

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2022/07/KiCad-6.0.7-Release

[Bassman59]

The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest series 6 stable release. The 6.0.7 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the previous release.

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2022/07/KiCad-6.0.7-Release

Ah, that "Crash on shutdown" thing was killing me, glad to see it got fixed.

[Ed.Kloonk]

The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest series 6 stable release. The 6.0.7 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the previous release.

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2022/07/KiCad-6.0.7-Release

Ah, that "Crash on shutdown" thing was killing me, glad to see it got fixed.

Some people pay very good money for software that does that.

[Warhawk]

Mr Ed.Kloonk, please stop talking about our Altium products. 
John Doe,
Circuit Studio product launch specialist

[eugene]

The ME's that I've worked with regularly complained that SolidWorks has locked up in the middle of doing something. SOP as far as I can tell.

[JohanH]

Does KICAD use the GPU significantly (besides just displaying graphics as any SVGA or better 2D graphics adapter would)?  Or does it use significant shaders, programmable GPU features, etc. for significant benefit?

On Linux at least, there is the option to enable OpenGL (accelerated graphics). I haven't seen much difference, except for the 3D preview in PCB design. The 3D preview even has raytracing capability, which is really sluggish even with a relatively modern graphics card (I have GTX 1070 that doesn't have any real raytracing capabilities). But I haven't explored all features and is by no means an expert, just a regular user. Naturally, I keep to the latest version available. I experienced some crashes in the early 6.0 release. Now with the later updates, I haven't seen issues.

If you have a modern PC, I imagine it wouldn't be a problem to run it in a container. On Linux, I would recommend flatpak. It requires less resources than a "real" container.

There are also unofficial repositories for many OS out there.

[bd139]

Got to say that on macOS the display is smooth as butter in the PCB and schematic editor. Display is definitely hardware accelerated and runs up to 120Hz.

But Cmd-S every 30 seconds is still built in. Occasionally it crashes. I lost about 20 mins of board layout yesterday because I was not saving every 30 seconds.

[MarkR42]

Kicad does use the GPU significantly and it historically did not work well with VMs. Most of the virtual machines don't have good 3d acceleration support, and/or its guest OS drivers are dodgy.

I was able to get (after they fixed my bugs, thanks!) Kicad 6 working in Linux in Virtualbox. This was, I think, mostly using a software rendering implementation which is a lot slower than the GPU (the 3d viewer gets quite sluggish with complicated boards) - but it is still usable in the schematic editor and PCB editor - I don't have any highly complex boards, but I imagine it will become unusable eventually.

Hardware rendering I couldn't get working reliably on either Linux or Windows guest OS. But it works really well natively (not in a VM) in Windows and Linux.

[SiliconWizard]

I've tried KiCad through a VNC connection and it "mostly" works. There are some issues with the zoom function not zooming at the correct position relative to the cursor. And of course it's sluggish.

[nctnico]

I may give a VM a try ASAP.

Unfortunately I'm not even sure if it is possible to get VIRGL (a 3d acceleration scheme for LINUX guest VMs)  working given my setup / hardware / drivers / distribution packages but I would think that some 3d acceleration for a VM would help a lot vs. none at all given the above comments about lag and sluggish 3d viewer experiences.   It didn't work (in general, not KICAD in particular) with my last distribution / setup so we'll see now.

AFAIK the Mesa3d packages should help. This gives you emulated OpenGL (if Kicad uses that). With a Linux host and Windows guest, the Mesa3d emulated OpenGL works well for CAD purposes.

[MarkR42]

I've tried KiCad through a VNC connection and it "mostly" works. There are some issues with the zoom function not zooming at the correct position relative to the cursor. And of course it's sluggish.

Apparently that's not a bug, it's a feature. You can turn on sensible mouse-wheel zoom behaviour by disabling option "Mouse and Touchpad -> Center and warp cursor on zoom"

[SiliconWizard]

I've tried KiCad through a VNC connection and it "mostly" works. There are some issues with the zoom function not zooming at the correct position relative to the cursor. And of course it's sluggish.

Apparently that's not a bug, it's a feature. You can turn on sensible mouse-wheel zoom behaviour by disabling option "Mouse and Touchpad -> Center and warp cursor on zoom"

No no, that's not what I'm talking about. This wouldn't be specific to VNC, and I'm actually used to this feature. I personally prefer the zoom re-centering the view, I find it more productive. It's just that on VNC, the zoom does absolutely nothing coherent and nothing like it does on normal desktop in either setting. Anyway, that was just for mentioning using it through VNC - I do not see much use of that as KiCad is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux. I had just tried through VNC out of curiosity, as I have a headless Linux box that I access through SSH or VNC.

And it's possibly just a bug of my VNC viewer, which I suspect. It doesn't have this problem with other applications, but I suspect that it's because KiCad uses OpenGL.