KiCAD 7 (RC) - Testing and looking for feature "Skeletal View" ?

[Uky]

Downloaded Version 7 RC today, nightly build 27th of january and began exploring it.

In the preferences menus, there are a number of settings but my "favorite" setting, coming from Cadence where I use
skeletal view of traces and shapes is not available. In the Cadence settings, the opacity and the contour (skeletal) view
can be controlled independently. This feature "unclutters" a complex board design where otherwise one layer blocks the view
of others under it. The layer preiority can be set but IMO, the skeletal view is a very nice graphic feature.

Now: Is there such a setting in KiCAD that I have not found?

[djsb]

If you look on the left-hand side menu, you can switch the pads, tracks and via's to outline mode. If you look at the right-hand menu under objects, you can control the opacity of layers. There are other layer highlighting features that I'm sure you'll find as you continue to explore KiCad.

[Uky]

That would be in the editor environment and not in the preferences menu then.
I did not get that far but I will will be looking for this feature. It would be v e r y nice to have...

 

[MadScientist]

If you look on the left-hand side menu, you can switch the pads, tracks and via's to outline mode. If you look at the right-hand menu under objects, you can control the opacity of layers. There are other layer highlighting features that I'm sure you'll find as you continue to explore KiCad.

You can achieve similar things with kicad , yes

[JohanH]

BTW, be careful with nightly and RC versions. I've been using it for a couple of weeks, but since a week ago I can't open some projects. Eeschema and Pcbnew segfault when opening the projects. So I have two small projects now that are stuck, because I made them with the development version and they just crashes when trying to open them. And also many older projects made with 6.0 crashes when opening. Some projects don't crash however (smaller ones?) and when I make a new project from scratch it doesn't crash. Hopefully the issue is known and will be fixed.

[hpw]

BTW, be careful with nightly and RC versions. I've been using it for a couple of weeks, but since a week ago I can't open some projects. Eeschema and Pcbnew segfault when opening the projects. So I have two small projects now that are stuck, because I made them with the development version and they just crashes when trying to open them. And also many older projects made with 6.0 crashes when opening. Some projects don't crash however (smaller ones?) and when I make a new project from scratch it doesn't crash. Hopefully the issue is known and will be fixed.

Hmm, it may a good idea to post your problems on the issue DB... the issue is may only related to your project(s)... otherwise the developers have no chance to fix it.. just IMHO, one is know about net lists as on 7 rc2.

[JohanH]

Hmm, it may a good idea to post your problems on the issue DB... the issue is may only related to your project(s)... otherwise the developers have no chance to fix it.. just IMHO, one is know about net lists as on 7 rc2.

I figured out where the issue came from (including a workaround) and reported it. Looks like the bug is now potentially delaying the 7.0 release further, unless it's a quick fix. Sorry everyone! 

[JohanH]

I figured out where the issue came from (including a workaround) and reported it. Looks like the bug is now potentially delaying the 7.0 release further, unless it's a quick fix. Sorry everyone! 

They fixed it already. That was quick!

[SiliconWizard]

Not sorry. Thanks. I expect the switch to v7 to be full of "surprises", even after the RC phase, so anything that can be ironed out during this phase is welcome.

One question about the libraries: can you tell us about compatibility with v6? Do v6 libraries have to be converted in some way for v7? Are the v7 libraries definitely incompatible with v6?

[JohanH]

I'm not sure about libraries. But projects can't definitely be converted back. I tried and it was somewhat possible to open in v6 after some diffing and command line trickery (removing lots of new attributes from the v7 project files). But the projects were broken and had to be repaired. Now if I'm upgrading to v7 I'm not looking back, so I don't intend to try using newer libraries with older versions. Maybe someone else knows? Importing v6 projects and libraries to 7 is seamless.

[JohanH]

Looks like there is now a stable 7.0.0 tag since yesterday https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/tags

Congratulations to all involved!

I guess they are still smoke testing various platforms before release announcement.

Up and running now from Fedora Copr repository. It says "7.0.0-1.fc37, release build". (Note that the Copr repository is experimental and not an official repository).

[Doctorandus_P]

Several users are also getting excited because they already got V7.

https://forum.kicad.info/t/v7-release-just-updated-on-my-system/40132/9

And this is normal. It takes some time to roll out the new version on all platforms, and the official announcement is usually only made after it's available for all platforms. Otherwise there would be a lot of confusion and complaints about an version release that is not available for everyone yet.

[SiliconWizard]

Gonna try and build it.