Version 8 Project News

[IanJ]

Version 8 coming per:



Expected Jan. 31st 2024.

COMMON FEATURES:
SVG export improvements
Start up splash screen
Alternate hot keys
Windows arm64 support
EasyEDA project importer
ERC and DRC from command line interface (JSON output)

SCHEMATIC:
Support flat hierarchy multiple file designs
Object property panel for schematic and symbol library editors
Highlighted net navigator panel
Search panel
Internal bill of materials (BOM) tool
Object grid alignment in schematic and symbol library editors
Nested symbol inheritance
Tool to check for symbol library differences in schematic
Cadence Allegro PCB Designer netlist exporter
SVG and DXF import in schematic and symbol editors
CADSTAR symbol library importer
Altium symbol library importer
Eagle symbol library importer
Symbol editor library tree preview
Symbol library file changer watcher
Symbol library editor migrate third party and legacy libraries
Differential cursors in sumulator
Import LTSpice schematics
Major SPICE simulator improvements (FFT, S-parameters, Fourier, etc.)
Editable power symbols

BOARD:
Tool to check for footprint library changes in PCB editor
Altium footprint library importer
Import SolidWorks PCB files
Do not populate flag for position file export
Allow connectivity to graphics shapes on copper layers
Interactive meander tuning
STEP export improvements
Footprint editor properties panel
Footprint editor library tree preview
CADSTAR foorprint library importer

MISC:
Major 3D viewer improvements

PS. I have no involvement, I just typed this up from the slides presented in the video.

Ian.

[Fgrir]

Finally, the lack of a start up splash screen had me seriously considering going back to Altium 

But for real there are some nice improvements in that list and I am feeling better and better about not renewing my Altium subscription this year.

[Doctorandus_P]

Finally, the lack of a start up splash screen had me seriously considering going back to Altium

Sigh I hope that can be turned off. At the moment KiCad's project manager starts in less then a second and adding spash screens is such a waste of time (and developer effort).

[IanJ]

Finally, the lack of a start up splash screen had me seriously considering going back to Altium

Sigh I hope that can be turned off. At the moment KiCad's project manager starts in less then a second and adding spash screens is such a waste of time (and developer effort).

I guess it's a marketing thing to give the app some identity & presence on the desktop......but yes, I'll likely turn it off also.

Ian.

[themadhippy]

EasyEDA project importer

Yes please

[golden_labels]

I hope that can be turned off. At the moment KiCad's project manager starts in less then a second and adding spash screens is such a waste of time (and developer effort).

Unless the splash screen has been added, because KiCad 8 loads so slowly the user must has something to look at.

[SiliconWizard]

The list looks nice but I highly doubt the devs can get anything like this done and stable by the end of January.

[VEGETA]

internal BOM is fantastic, next should be internal native panellization tool.

what I wanted to see is the tabs systems instead of individual apps within the kicad main software. this will make it more modern and nicer.

some interactive routing features should also be added, like routing traces together and when coming close to other traces it pushes them around...etc

[golden_labels]

As for a multi-window interface: this is a bit deeper than it may seem, if you started using KiCad only recently. The historical context here is that KiCad was not started as a single application. Initially it was a collection of related, but otherwise independent tools. Until quite recently (about 5 years???) working with them still required manual generation and importing of netlists, and doing stuff in the right order. It has been improved since then and now KiCad gives a feeling of being a single application. But the legacy still remains and under the hood it’s a blob of glue keeping together a bunch of disconnected programs.

The consequence is: introducing an option to permit users to choose between multi-window and tabbed interfaces is going to require much more serious structural changes and effort than it may seem at a glance. I do not oppose the idea of giving such a choice, I am not saying it is not going to happen, but I want to make you aware this is not a matter of drawing a few components in an UI editor during two lazy evenings.

[Doctorandus_P]

The list looks nice but I highly doubt the devs can get anything like this done and stable by the end of January.

Why do you doubt that? I think KiCad V7.99 is going into feature freeze at the end of this month (September), so that means all those features are already implemented and it leaves four months of testing and bug fixing. And a lot of people can help with finding and reporting bugs. I have reported several bugs myself, and they tend to get fixed between less than half an hour and a few days.

In general, when a new mayor KiCad version is released, it is stable enough to be used for the "general public" and hobbyists, but if you have a company that depends on KiCad, then a lot of people have the opinion it's better to wait a few months with updating to the new mayor version and most of the remaining bugs have been fixed. Or at least be a bit cautious and not update all projects at the same time.

[Zoli]

Finally, the lack of a start up splash screen had me seriously considering going back to Altium

Sigh I hope that can be turned off. At the moment KiCad's project manager starts in less then a second and adding spash screens is such a waste of time (and developer effort).

The project manager is fast/instant loading, but the editors don't; it would make some sense to add splash screen to them instead of the current plain window/progress bar - just my .02$.

[Doctorandus_P]

]The project manager is fast/instant loading, but the editors don't;

Nope. As a test case I use the A64 OlinuXino which is the first project on: https://www.kicad.org/made-with-kicad/ (and the whole project is on github). On my Ryzen 5600G the schematic loads in about 1 second, and the PCB in around 2 seconds (or a bit less). There is just no time to show a splash screen and giving a user the ability to view it without stretching this startup window. And that would be a real nuisance. I quite often open other projects, sometimes for a quick reference, other times to make a copy of a part of it. Showing the splash screens each time is an annoyance.

Now I think about it, I think I haven't seen splash screens in many years. They are an artifact of ages gone by, when PC's were so slow that programs needed 30seconds or so just to start... After running some tests, only the Eclipse abomination shows a splash screen on my linux box. Some programs may attempt to show a (small) splash screen, as I see something blinking during program start, but I can't see what it is.

What is the use of showing what program is started? When I start KiCad, I already know KiCad is starting.
And on top of that, just that something silly like a splash screen generates a whole conversation here shows what a waste of time such an anti feature is.

[delfinom]

And on top of that, just that something silly like a splash screen generates a whole conversation here shows what a waste of time such an anti feature is.

Look, everyone keeps demanding we copy Altium, so we started copying Altium.

[Fgrir]

Look, everyone keeps demanding we copy Altium, so we started copying Altium.

But I didn't see "Access violation" pop-ups on the coming features   

[SiliconWizard]

And on top of that, just that something silly like a splash screen generates a whole conversation here shows what a waste of time such an anti feature is.

Look, everyone keeps demanding we copy Altium, so we started copying Altium.

So are you guys trying to give users who ask for Altium-like features a lesson?

[nctnico]

And on top of that, just that something silly like a splash screen generates a whole conversation here shows what a waste of time such an anti feature is.

Look, everyone keeps demanding we copy Altium, so we started copying Altium.

Please don't do that... even on a super duper fast PC Altium is slow like a snail. Altium got lots of things wrong as well so I hope you are joking.

[Macbeth]

I just typed Ki.. on my Windows 11 PC and KiCad 7.0 came up instantly, clicked on it and in a time I can only measure in milliseconds my last project was fully loaded without a stupid splash screen.

Splash screens are from the 8 bit era of loading games from tape in the 1980's. Why are they re-introducing them? 

[Veteran68]

Back in the day splash screens were needed to give you something to look at while things loaded. So you could be sure the program started when you clicked it, and you don't keep clicking because you weren't sure, then have multiple instances starting. It's a well established UI/UX principle that you should immediately give the user feedback when they interact with something. Don't just sit there working in the background and leave them hanging.

These days, it's more about one word: Branding. It's the software equivalent of a billboard.

Hopefully, they'll have the option to disable it.

[tszaboo]

Very nice set of features, it's good to see this free software improving over the years.
The library import is great, especially if they start importing the countless components that are in Altium now. They can get serious traction like that.

[delfinom]

Back in the day splash screens were needed to give you something to look at while things loaded. So you could be sure the program started when you clicked it, and you don't keep clicking because you weren't sure, then have multiple instances starting. It's a well established UI/UX principle that you should immediately give the user feedback when they interact with something. Don't just sit there working in the background and leave them hanging.

These days, it's more about one word: Branding. It's the software equivalent of a billboard.

Hopefully, they'll have the option to disable it.

I can assure you, the 3-5 seconds (or more depending on your potato) it takes kicad to start up on Windows is not because of branding but because of how Windows file system caching works. The first start (after a Windows restart) will always be slow and it's not even a KiCad controllable thing. The subsequent restarts are always instant due to said file system cache. This extends to many programs throughout the history of Windows and Microsoft has never really improved it.

Conversely, macOS and Linux apps start near instantly because there's no caching layer operating in the same way as Windows does it. Coincidentally, the splash screen currently appears and disappears in less than a blink of the eye on those platforms

You can even see this behavior on Windows when causing a KiCad footprint library load, the first time on Windows, depending on your PC can be a slog taking tens of seconds. Every subsequent restart is really fast and that's not due to anything KiCad is doing but that silly disk caching layer.

tl;dr, the splash screen is adding absolutely zero overhead, it does not have a magic delay timer. It is loaded immediately on launch and closes the first chance loading is complete.
Maybe we'll pencil in "disabling the splash screen" as a feature in v10.

[nctnico]

Very nice set of features, it's good to see this free software improving over the years.
The library import is great, especially if they start importing the countless components that are in Altium now. They can get serious traction like that.

In my experience importing / converting designs / libraries is highly overrated and should not be relied on. The problem is that for import to really work, both pieces of software need to treat objects in the exact same way or must have primitives / properties that supply 100% compatible counterparts. The chance of that being the case is extremely low. This means you are very likely left with wonky symbols/ footprints and are better off creating new symbols / footprints which use the proper primitives / properties that match the workflow the software is using. Been there, done that.

[Doctorandus_P]

JayzTwoCents recently did a review of an SSD that transfers 13GByte/s.

Also, on the KiCad users forum, there is a thread on which just now a link to the third video of KiCon 2023 has been posted.
https://forum.kicad.info/t/kicon-2023-videos/44977

Or go to youtube and look at the other video's from the https://www.youtube.com/@kicadeda/videos channel.

[SiliconWizard]

Very nice set of features, it's good to see this free software improving over the years.
The library import is great, especially if they start importing the countless components that are in Altium now. They can get serious traction like that.

In my experience importing / converting designs / libraries is highly overrated and should not be relied on. The problem is that for import to really work, both pieces of software need to treat objects in the exact same way or must have primitives / properties that supply 100% compatible counterparts. The chance of that being the case is extremely low. This means you are very likely left with wonky symbols/ footprints and are better off creating new symbols / footprints which use the proper primitives / properties that match the workflow the software is using. Been there, done that.

Yeah, overall I agree with this. While the feature looks attractive to people who haven't switched to a different software yet and are reluctant because of their existing libraries, the end result of automatic conversion is very often disappointing and requires a lot of additional work. So, yeah.

[SiliconWizard]

KiCad has never taken 5 seconds to start on my machines when I was using it on Windows. It was nearly instant just like on Linux. But I was using it on Windows 7, so maybe things have gotten worse on more recent Windows versions, I don't know.

The one thing that tended to be slowish was the first run of the symbol and footprint editors  - it was unbearably slow with libraries on a HDD, even the fastest HDD available. It was taking about 5 s on a SATA SSD. And less than 1 s on a NVMe SSD. Completely forget about using KiCad on anything other than a SSD, and do not even think of using libraries on a server on your network rather than locally on a very fast SSD.

[tszaboo]

Very nice set of features, it's good to see this free software improving over the years.
The library import is great, especially if they start importing the countless components that are in Altium now. They can get serious traction like that.

In my experience importing / converting designs / libraries is highly overrated and should not be relied on. The problem is that for import to really work, both pieces of software need to treat objects in the exact same way or must have primitives / properties that supply 100% compatible counterparts. The chance of that being the case is extremely low. This means you are very likely left with wonky symbols/ footprints and are better off creating new symbols / footprints which use the proper primitives / properties that match the workflow the software is using. Been there, done that.

What I've done was OrCAD imports to Altium. It was working quite well, the footprints were usable, and the Schematic symbols as well. Though they remained those ugly OrCAD symbols. The only part which wasn't usable was the 3D STEP objects, which doesn't really prevent you from using it. I had boards imported from orcad to altium, and made significant changes to it, releasing into production, so not just a quick trial.

And having the importer for people to use is nice, but that's not what should be exciting. Würth has Altium library for practically all their components. If someone sits down, imports, maybe fixes, and orcad-ifys all the libraries, you suddenly have access to thousands of components in Orcad. Do that for all the easyEDA files, and a few other manufacturers and suddenly there is a significant library available as standard in orcad. Exciting times.