Version 7.0.0 Released

While we missed our official annual release schedule date of January 31st, the annual release schedule went pretty well for our first attempt. We will continue to improve our stable release process going forward as we adapt to the new schedule.

Custom font support is now available in the schematic, PCB, and worksheet editors to allow the use of any system font.

Text box support was added in both the schematic and PCB editors.

3Dconnexion has contributed support in the schematic, symbol library, PCB, and footprint editors and 3D viewer for their line of SpaceMouse products. For those unfamiliar, 3D mice are alternative input devices that give a unique way of navigating both 3D and 2D canvases that some users find more ergonomic or intuitive than traditional mice. Users with a 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse may find this a welcome addition to KiCad’s capabilities to support their needs.

Sentry is an open source platform to capture application events, crash dumps, and other analytics.

Both their hosted platform and the integrated SDK to handle crash reporting in C++ applications are open source on GitHub under the MIT license.

Sentry has sponsored KiCad by providing the core team with access to their SaaS platform to receive crash reports from KiCad users. During the Version 7 development cycle, KiCad has enabled opt-in Sentry crash reporting for Windows users (we are exploring expanding Sentry to more platforms in a future release). Users will be prompted once when KiCad is first started, and may choose whether or not to enable Sentry. Users may also switch Sentry data collection on or off at any time in the KiCad preferences.

Why do we want to collect data from users?

What data is collected if Sentry is enabled?

More details about Sentry in KiCad

The introduction of Sentry resolves a long-standing desire of the KiCad team to capture crash dumps without user involvement, and the use of Sentry offers us a very easy solution to do it and help make KiCad better for everyone.

Throughout the development of KiCad 7, the Sentry tool has already proven its usefulness by allowing the development team to resolve over two dozen crash bugs that were not previously reported by users. We look forward to this feature allowing us to continuously improve KiCad’s reliability over time.

The Plugin and Content Manager now can automatically check if an updated version of an installed package is available and prompt the user to update. Content. Each time KiCad is launched, the plugin status is automatically queried in the background and displayed:

The automatic update checking behavior is opt-in and can be disabled.

Drag and drop handles have been added to various parts of KiCad that results in the following actions:

KiCad now builds and can be packaged correctly as native Apple silicon processors (M1, M2, etc). This means that KiCad no longer has to run in emulation mode under the latest Apple hardware.

The separate kicad-cli binary has been implemented to allow scripting of many of the KiCad editor outputs.

The KiCad command line interface brings all the necessary functions to automate export elements of schematic and pcb designs.

The currently available commands are:

You can use the -h argument to find out more about the command specific options.

These changes have also enabled the STEP export to work headless on Linux, unlike the original kicad2step binary.

What is orthogonal dragging? In 6.0 and earlier, a drag operation in the Schematic Editor moves symbols while keeping wires attached to the symbol. However, it was a literal form of "attach" and wires would end up at odd angles and directions.

An example can be seen here of the old behavior:

Orthogonal dragging forces all wires to extend and move forming right angles as expected for a schematic.

The new behavior is demonstrated in this animation:

The Symbol Editor Pin Table got a number of new features, including the ability to:

A new ERC check to warn when symbols are placed using an a incompatible grid. A grid mismatch can lead to situations where connections are not truly made and with a cascade of other issues such as pins being passive can lead to scenarios where you end up producing bad PCBs.

KiCad 6 originally included a single toggle between fixed right-angle wires and "any angle" mode. This change introduces a wire mode for 45 degree start and end to help in drawing crisp schematics.

You can start drawing a wire and hit the key combination of Shift + Spacebar to cycle between wire drawing modes. Icons on the left side toolbar indicate the current mode.

Support has been added for explicitly marking symbols in a schematic as Do Not Populate ("DNP"). The resulting symbols are grayed out in the schematic and marked with a red cross. DNP symbols are excluded from any KiCad-generated placement files.

There is now a simulation model editor. This is a new dialog available as a "Simulation Model" button in the symbol properties of any schematic symbol. It allows configuration of simulation model parameters in a GUI rather than spice text inserted on schematic. The resulting configuration gets passed to the simulator as expected. Everything from configuring a symbol as "standard" spice model (resistors,caps,diodes,bjts) to assigning custom models in libraries (it will even load the library and let you select individual models contained within) is supported. It also allows for customization of the schematic pin to spice model pin mapping.

A long requested feature by many users of KiCad has been the ability to link symbol selection to a database which is common in other schematic CAD tools. KiCad can now add connectivity to external databases via ODBC functionality across KiCad’s three main platforms.

The database library system allows creating a centralized database of symbol to footprint associations along with any metadata about your parts that can be shared across your schematics by you and others connected to the same database.

More information can be found in the KiCad database libraries documentation.

An ongoing forum discussion about the feature shows how some users are starting to make use of databases in their KiCad workflows.

Hyperlinks are now supported inside schematics. This means a text object on a schematic page can detect if the text is a hyperlink property. Hyperlink text makes the text object become clickable.

Supported hyperlinks are:

A new optional check to determine if your board design has footprints that have deviated from the library they are linked to.

Ignored tests are now listed in their own separate tab.

Two new DRC rule constraints mechanical_clearance and mechanical_hole_clearance have been add to the custom rules that the complement the clearance and hole_clearance constraints.

While the later are not run on items of the same net, the mechanical_* versions are.

Custom rule severities can now be defined per custom rule with possible values of ignore, warning, error, and exclusion.

New custom rule constrains thermal_relief_gap, thermal_spoke_width and zone_connection have been added for rule checking copper connections that get generated between pads and zone fills.

The zone_connection constraint has valid options of solid, thermal_reliefs or, none.

Text objects can now declare as "Knockout" meaning the text will subtract from a shaded box. This is useful for making more attention grabbing silkscreen.

There is now a new option that will automatically refill zones when a board change is detected rather than requiring the user to trigger zone fills manually. This is enabled by default to help new users, but may be disabled in case it gets in the way for power users or those working on very large designs.

Many ease of use enhancements have been made to the board and footprint editors.

A new panel added to board editor enables typing query strings with wildcard s and filtering out objects on the design while displaying the remaining results in a list. The list can be clicked on to select objects on the editing canvas.

A new properties panel is now available in the board editor.

This panel allows quick access to many of the properties of objects, and allows you to edit multiple objects at the same time. Access to more properties will be added over time, and future KiCad releases will expand the properties panel to the schematic and library editors.

The algorithm that placed footprints on the PCB was improved to result in a more compact layout.

Before the algorithm of this change:

After the algorithm of this change:

A powerful new tool was added that allows for a selection a logical portion of a schematic in the schematic editor and with a new right click menu option or the P hotkey in the board editor, selected symbol footprint can now use the "Pack and Move" algorithm to create one compacted group rather than having to manually locate and drag footprints in the board editor.

The STEP exporter now uses the same PCB parsing engine as the rest of KiCad. This change now brings the addition relative 3d model paths to the footprint. Simply start the paths with the expected ./ or ../ and the 3D viewer and STEP exporter will attempt to find the model relative to the footprint file. This change should allow better portability of footprint libraries and 3d models.

The "3D Path Aliases" have been removed from KiCad. These were an independent system from the "Environment Variable" system also used for paths. It had it’s own file format and usage syntax which both introduced unexpected bugs. Unifying the system makes the usage of Environment Variables standard throughout KiCad. "3D Path Aliases" will be automatically migrated to an environment variable on launch. However, the alias may get renamed if the alias had characters beyond uppercase A-Z,0-9 and underscores due to the limitations of environment variables across platforms.