KiCAD 7.0.0 released.

[johnboxall]

See https://www.kicad.org/blog/2023/02/Version-7.0.0-Released/

[ataradov]

Linux version does not seem to be fully released yet. PPA still says that it is not ready.

[dobsonr741]

 Orthogonal dragging -   

[themadhippy]

well that woz fun,followed the instruction to install from the terminal in ubuntu and ended up with another install of 6

[ataradov]

Well, they clearly have not updated instructions yet. PPA has 6.0 in the name, this should have been a clue.

V7 PPA would be https://launchpad.net/~kicad/+archive/ubuntu/kicad-7.0-releases, but it is empty at the moment.

[ppTRN]

Orthogonal dragging -   

It will save me soo many tears! I always make a mess with the grid widouth it

[JohanH]

Linux version does not seem to be fully released yet. PPA still says that it is not ready.

It's complicated. Technically it was released on Saturday when they put the release tag in the source repository on gitlab. How different downstream distributions do their packaging is another matter. The release message seems to be announced when they have verified packages of most common platforms, i.e. the ones they provide themselves (Windows, Mac) and some of the most common distributions that they cooperate with. That's fine.

For instance Fedora 37 (that I use) will not update to KiCAD 7 in their repositories. Next version of Fedora will get KiCAD 7. But you can install it as a flatpak in any version.

[ataradov]

For instance Fedora 37 (that I use) will not update to KiCAD 7 in their repositories. Next version of Fedora will get KiCAD 7. But you can install it as a flatpak in any version.

It is not going to get into the official release for ages, but that PPA repo is maintained by the KiCAD team and for 6.x branch it was updating instantly on each minor release. Not sure why 7.0 PPA did not update and official instruction to install "7.0" on Ubuntu lead to instructions that install 6.x.

[berke]

The "pack and move footprint" seems really neat.  I'm sick of having to follow the schematic in another window and using the "T" command to move related components one by one.

[ppTRN]

This is my first time upgrading Kicad to a newer version. Should I just install it and the folders will "figure it out", or shoud I backup the progect and library folder, and then paste them on the new folder created with the new intstall?

[JohanH]

It is not going to get into the official release for ages, but that PPA repo is maintained by the KiCAD team and for 6.x branch it was updating instantly on each minor release. Not sure why 7.0 PPA did not update and official instruction to install "7.0" on Ubuntu lead to instructions that install 6.x.

Reportedly there have been issues with library versions in various distributions.

Flatpak is a good solution when upstream doesn't want to deal with every possible Linux distribution out there.

[JohanH]

This is my first time upgrading Kicad to a newer version. Should I just install it and the folders will "figure it out", or shoud I backup the progect and library folder, and then paste them on the new folder created with the new intstall?

It's not a bad idea to backup your projects and name them ..._v6. Or just backup with time stamp.

In v7 you will be asked to import settings/library paths from v6. Projects will be converted to v7 format when you save them. Then they can't be opened with older versions any more.

[ppTRN]

This is my first time upgrading Kicad to a newer version. Should I just install it and the folders will "figure it out", or shoud I backup the progect and library folder, and then paste them on the new folder created with the new intstall?

It's not a bad idea to backup your projects and name them

I surely will. Thank you

[eugene]

Linux version does not seem to be fully released yet. PPA still says that it is not ready.

I just installed V7 to Ubuntu from the PPA. Note that it's necessary to modify the installation instructions at kicad.org:

replace

Code: [Select]

ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases
with

Code: [Select]

ppa:kicad/kicad-7.0-releases
The upgrade became available on PPA just with the last couple of hours. I expect that someone will get around to fixing the installation instructions before too long. 

[ataradov]

The upgrade became available on PPA just with the last couple of hours. I expect that someone will get around to fixing the installation instructions before too long. 

Yeah, I've seen that the files were added to the PPA. Will try it a bit later.

It is strange that the same PPA distributes its own cmake for some reason.

Seems to work fine on the quick test. The only observed issue is that in Linux Mint menu items have disappeared. Not a huge deal.

[themadhippy]

in Linux Mint menu items have disappeared

yea caught me out in ubuntu.However whatever i try i cant seem to get the bugger to appear on the menu or even a desktop launcher,but it works fine from the terminal.

[ataradov]

yea caught me out in ubuntu.However whatever i try i cant seem to get the bugger to appear on the menu or even a desktop launcher,but it works fine from the terminal.

I manually extracted *.desktop files from the deb file and it works. The files on disk were empty. Not sure what is going on, but I'm sure it is not intentional and would be fixed in future releases.

[themadhippy]

Temporary fixed by copying an existing top panel short cut and editing it They certainly made simple things harder in newer versions of ubuntu,im sure you used to be able to right click the desk top and there was an "add launcher" option

[SiliconWizard]

As I mentioned earlier, I have managed to build KiCad 6 for Windows 7 for a while now and a couple users here have shown interest and have tested it. I personally use it on a daily basis.

So of course I did try building v7 for Windows 7. Required only a minor change compared to v6. So, I built it, but I have an issue. Everything runs except the schematic editor, due to a dependance on Win 8+ functions from the Windows API. From what I've checked, KiCad code base doesn't directly use any such functions except for CreateFile2(), which has a conditional compilation anyway, so it's not a problem. But the other dependencies are due to MSYS2 (which I've been using to build KiCad on Windows) not supporting Win 7 anymore now - so their libraries are not made to be compatible with Win 7 anymore. It's pretty recent (although MSYS2 have been warning us for a few months, but they made the switch like a week ago.)

Don't know yet if I'll be able to circumvent that without having to go through hoops. It's probably going to bite for building other software than KiCad on MSYS2 too.

That had to happen. :'(

[djsb]

Nightly builds are now tagged as V7.99
Looking forward to new features in V8 particularly improvements to simulation.

[eugene]

in Linux Mint menu items have disappeared

yea caught me out in ubuntu.However whatever i try i cant seem to get the bugger to appear on the menu or even a desktop launcher,but it works fine from the terminal.

Not sure why Ubuntu doesn't ship with a utility to edit the applications menu. Actually, it doesn't ship with an applications menu at all, it needs to be added with tweaks! Anyway, alacarte works well to edit the menu, change icons, etc...

(I'm still running 20.04. When I eventually upgrade I'm going back to Mint, but that's another discussion.)

[stryker]

I only upgraded to 6 recently.  But with 7 including orthoganal dragging, text boxes and reversed silkscreen text that I am so pleased to see.  This is a deluge of good news!

[David Aurora]

I feel like I only just moved to 6, but this looks worth a quick jump.

One question though- can someone point me to the most recent, best practices for library management? I feel like my libraries have always been a mess in Kicad and I don't know how much is from version changes and how much is from doing it the wrong way. The move to 7 feels like the right time for me to do things whatever the proper way is in terms of where I put files and folders going forward.

[MT]

V7.0.0 on Win10 ,8GB machine, schematics randomly locks up, pcb works fine.

[dobsonr741]

One question though- can someone point me to the most recent, best practices for library management?

Ditto. Yesterday I opened up a downloaded schematics from someone else, copied a block from the schematics, opened my project and pasted it. The symbol, not in the standard library, came over just fine. I have no idea what the consequences will be.

[SiliconWizard]

V7.0.0 on Win10 ,8GB machine, schematics randomly locks up, pcb works fine.

Ouch.

Apparently many Linux distros haven't released v7 yet, even those like Arch that tend to release KiCad packages as soon as new versions are tagged and often even before they get announced, so the testing phase doesn't seem to be going that well.

[dobsonr741]

V7.0.0 on Win10 ,8GB machine, schematics randomly locks up, pcb works fine.

https://www.kicad.org/help/report-an-issue/

[delfinom]

V7.0.0 on Win10 ,8GB machine, schematics randomly locks up, pcb works fine.

Ouch.

Apparently many Linux distros haven't released v7 yet, even those like Arch that tend to release KiCad packages as soon as new versions are tagged and often even before they get announced, so the testing phase doesn't seem to be going that well.

The Arch maintainer has become unreachable :shrug:

[delfinom]

V7.0.0 on Win10 ,8GB machine, schematics randomly locks up, pcb works fine.

If you can report it to the issue tracker it would help, bonus points, if it's actually a lockup and not a crash, you can open Task Manager, go to details, right click the process (kicad.exe or eeschema.exe) and select Create Dump. Attach the dump file to the issue report and we should be able to nip that lockup in the butt pretty fast.

[SiliconWizard]

V7.0.0 on Win10 ,8GB machine, schematics randomly locks up, pcb works fine.

Ouch.

Apparently many Linux distros haven't released v7 yet, even those like Arch that tend to release KiCad packages as soon as new versions are tagged and often even before they get announced, so the testing phase doesn't seem to be going that well.

The Arch maintainer has become unreachable :shrug:

That's odd. All 6.x version got released on Arch before they got announced, including the latest 6.0.11. So the maintainer suddenly disapparead around the release of v7?

[MT]

V7.0.0 locks up during loading schematic for Ben, at ca 50:00

[exe]

This is my third attempt to jump on kicad. Couldn't get used to its UI. But with orthogonal drug I think I can overcome my disgust. Wish me luck)

Seriously, UI is so-so, imho. But I hope to get used to it.

[ebastler]

But with orthogonal drug I think I can overcome my disgust. Wish me luck)

Actually I don't think you have to be on drugs to enjoy KiCad. But if you have experienced adverse reactions before, maybe they help? 

[phiphiontheway]

Still have to save kicad 5 to edit the library in .lib file. Kinda anoy

[BadeBhaiya]

All the sheets are now visible at all times with the schematics hierarchy window.

A massive improvement in viewing multi-sheet schematics!

[TankSparks]

I hated version 5, version 6 is awesome, looking forward to version 7 but having problems with the plugins. Like kikit which is a huge time saver for panelizing, so it needs to work.  Please post if you get kikit to work on version 7

[SiliconWizard]

To me, it looks like it's a bit too early to adopt v7 in any professional setting.

For the developers, please don't take it personally. v7 looks great and there is a lot of work there and a lot of nice new features. I just think you didn't get enough early testers during the beta and RC phase.

I'm really looking forward to switching to it, I'll just wait for a few more weeks though.

[Doctorandus_P]

In the ancient KiCad V4, KiCad only had links to external libraries for the graphics of schematic symbols, but that has been improved gradually. In KiCad V5 this info was cashed in the [Project]-cache.lib as a temporary measure, and people often mistakingly deleted this file, did not back it up nor put it in git repositories, because they did not know it's meaning, and KiCad could reconstruct the project as long as the original libraries were still present.

In KiCad V6 and onward, all the graphics of schematic symbols are stored in the schematic file itself. (Footprints were already cached in the PCB file on older versions). The result is that KiCad projects have become more robust because they are independent of external libraries.

If you wish, you can create a library with all used schematic symbols or footprints with:
Schematic Editor / File / Export / Symbols to New Library
PCB Editor / File / Export / Footprints to New Library
But it's not mandatory. Keeping the links to external libraries may even be beneficial.
KiCad V7 does have a new ERC check for verifying used schematic symbols with their library counterparts, and it's up to the user whether to update the schematic, or silence the ERC for this.

In the KiCad V5 to V6 transition, the schematic file format was completely rewritten, and it was a quite big change, although most users did not notice what was happening under the hood. The transition of projects from KiCad V6 to V7 should be trivial.

To me, it looks like it's a bit too early to adopt v7 in any professional setting.

I agree with that. I also have the feeling the release of KiCad V7 was rushed a bit. If your business and income depends on KiCad, then it is better to wait until V7.0.1 is released, or maybe even V7.0.2. (And this is true for all mayor KiCad version updates) KiCad's development is going quite fast in the last few years (V7 has around 70 new features, developed in just a year) KiCad has to release it as a a "stable" version to get many more users to adopt it, and help with exposing bugs. As an example, just today a quite serious memory leak was reported for V7: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/14066 And this hole got plugged in 37 minutes after reporting it, and it will be included in KiCad V7.0.1

When you use KiCad, you should always keep it updated. Changes in the third digit are bug fix releases, and updates should always be safe. These bug fix updates are released approximately once a month. (But again, if your ability to buy sandwiches and pay your mortgage depends on it, wait a few weeks)

[SiliconWizard]

I've managed to build it for Win 7 and make it run!
A handful of potentially annoying bugs will be fixed in the next revision (7.0.1?) so I think it's reasonable to wait until this one to use it for any serious work.

I do appreciate being able to use any font (I've been waiting for this for a good while). Schematics do look better with appropriate fonts (the original KiCad font doesn't look particularly good on schematics, especially on screen.) Font rendering on screen is still not very good - I wish they'd use "native" font rendering, which almost always looks better, but I guess that would have required more changes. This is already a nice improvement, and with the right font, small text in low zoom levels is already easier to read than with the original font.

The sheet navigator is great, but I noticed that switching sheets with it seemed to be a bit sluggish compared to the old way of moving up and down sheet levels.

Also, they have apparently removed the setting in preferences to show or not show menu item icons. On my Windows build, icons do appear, but I did build it on Arch Linux (which doesn't have an official package yet), and menu icons do not appear (while they did in v6), and I haven't figured out why exactly yet.

That's all for now.

[delfinom]

and down sheet levels.

Also, they have apparently removed the setting in preferences to show or not show menu item icons. On my Windows build, icons do appear, but I did build it on Arch Linux (which doesn't have an official package yet), and menu icons do not appear (while they did in v6), and I haven't figured out why exactly yet.

Menu icons not appearing in non-Windows is a bug that requires someone to fix it in wxWidgets. Menu item handling got tweaked in wxWidgets 3.1.6+ but the way menu items are handled in KiCad is also a little edge case so it resulted in breakage. The setting is still there and does work on Windows

[SiliconWizard]

After trying on two computers and both Linux and Windows, I can confirm that switching hierarchical sheets has become noticeable slower on v7 compared to v6. Both using the new navigator and just the old way up/down.

This isn't ultra slow, but bordeline annoying.

[SiliconWizard]

Apparently the above was confirmed in the KiCad info forum. So, hopefully improvements in future versions.

KiCad 7.0.0 has been finally released on Arch Linux.

Probably still worth waiting for 7.0.1 though, but the more people at least test 7.0.0 seriously and the better 7.0.1 will be.

[firepower]

Installed onto Linuxmint 21.1 and when I open kicad and open project and choose 'other location' it is not showing the other drives on my PC only shows my linux drive. expecting it to also show me my C: and D: windows drives.
If I open Cura and open files and choose 'other locations' i can see my windows drives also.
I have my Kicad Project save to my D: drive

[Ranayna]

The Linux filesystem tree does not really know about your drives if you haven't mounted them.
Some file explorers, like for example Dolphin in Manjaro KDE, do automatically mount drives when you try to access them for the first time after a reboot (under /run/var or var/run, i don't remember), and show them as separated drives, but that is a thing unique to that file explorer.
Quite a few programs have implemented their own file dialogs, that then do not show these drives individually. The drives are surely mounted *somewhere* if you can access them. You just need to find out where, if you have not manually mounted them.

[JohanH]

Installed onto Linuxmint 21.1 and when I open kicad and open project and choose 'other location' it is not showing the other drives on my PC only shows my linux drive. expecting it to also show me my C: and D: windows drives.
If I open Cura and open files and choose 'other locations' i can see my windows drives also.
I have my Kicad Project save to my D: drive

Linux doesn't know the naming C: and D:. That's a Windows thing. Drives are traditionally mounted as specified by the /etc/fstab file or according to some udev rules. You can add drives yourself to /etc/fstab and specify where you want them mounted (but you have to know how to set permissions etc.). I don't know Linux Mint, but I would guess there is a mechanism to mount them automatically in your file manager. Check instructions for your specific OS.

[firepower]

Thanks for info, issue is with flatpack.
I uninstalled flatpack from software manager and installed kicad using method on kicad download page for linuxmint.
This install opens other locations correctly.

7.0.0 Stable Release

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kicad/kicad-7.0-releases
sudo apt update
sudo apt install kicad

[JohanH]

Thanks for info, issue is with flatpack.

Yes, flatpak has more protection/isolation (for security) and doesn't necessary have access to other file systems by default. In general, I prefer using native repositories instead of flatpak if decently recent version is available in repositories.

[SiliconWizard]

flatpak may make distributing software on Linux easier, but it's a whole can of worms.
If it's a permission issue, then you should have means of setting appropriate permissions for this particular install though.
But otherwise, using your distribution package manager will be the easiest path.

[RikV]

I understand that 7.0 is not downwards compatibel to 6.x. Is it however possible to run 7.0 alongside 6.x? Are the libraries common?

[LazyJack]

Yes, they can coexist. I tried it on Windows. You will have KiCAD6 and KiCAD7 and both of them work. AFAIK the libraries have to be separate as the library format has also changed. But they will be updated at first use, so v7 can use v6 libraries.

[SiliconWizard]

You can make them coexist. They can't share libraries as v7 libraries are not compatible with v6. You can reuse your v6 libraries in v7, but not the other way around - thus keeping separate libraries is the only safe way of using both versions.

On Windows, it's mainly a matter of installing v7 in a different directory. On Linux, well. Depends. See with your distro how to handle this. On most distros, the kicad package has now been updated to v7 and will just update your v6 install - having both coexist is usually a bit trickier on Linux.

In any case, again be careful with your custom libraries. As soon as you'll change anything in your libraries from v7, they will become unusable in v6. Keeping a separate copy of your custom libraries is a much safer bet, although obviously it can get pretty inconvenient.

[JohanH]

having both coexist is usually a bit trickier on Linux.

One option is to install v6 from the repository (apt, dnf etc.) if it's still offered by the distribution and v7 as a flatpak. The situation is not stable, as the distribution could update the repository version at some point. It's also possible to have custom installed flatpaks, meaning that they are installed in a custom location. This way it could be possible to have multiple versions, but it's a bit messy. The most stable way I can think of is having multiple virtual machines, which is no big deal in a linux system (I'm using Gnome Boxes for virtual machines on my desktop).

[SiliconWizard]

Yeah, flatpaks.

Otherwise, if you know how to compile it (it's not that hard), you can compile it yourself and install it wherever you want.
For instance, before v7 got released on Arch, I compiled it myself and installed it in /opt/kicad/kicad7.

If you can compile software from source, this is the way to go if you don't want to rely on flatpak stuff. Of course, in this case, it's absolutely not managed by any package manager so you're on your own to update it.

[SiliconWizard]

7.0.1 is released.