Version 8.0.0 Released

2023 was a big year for the KiCad library team. With the help of 8 new librarians joining the effort, the library gained over 1500 new symbols and 760 footprints, and had thousands of updates to fix or improve existing parts. The team processed over 1700 merge requests, about 25% of which were done in the last month alone! With many more people helping this year, the team is able to address issues more quickly and has been driving down the backlog of pending merge requests. We are excited to see so many contributors join the library team and accelerate the library’s growth.

A common piece of feedback about the KiCad footprint libraries has been that the Pin 1 indication style, which was based on the ill-fated draft standard IPC-7351C, is not intuitive. John Beard and Carsten Presser tackled this for KiCad 8, developing a new standard style and updating our footprint generators to apply this style to a number of automatically-generated footprints for SMD packages. While it will take time to update all footprints to this style, the new style can be seen on hundreds of footprints already.

KiCad continues to add support for importing and migrating data from other tools. KiCad 8 adds the ability to import full projects and libraries from EasyEDA (JLCEDA) Standard and Pro editions (Alex Shvartzkop), CADSTAR symbol and footprint libraries (Roberto Fernandez Bautista), Solidworks PCB board files (Jon Evans), Altium Designer symbol and integrated libraries (Alex Shvartzkop), EAGLE symbol libraries (Alex Shvartzkop), and LTSpice schematics (Chetan Shinde, Jeff Young, Alex Shvartzkop).

The schematic and symbol editors gained the ability to import vector graphics (DXF and SVG), giving you more options for annotating your designs:

The PCB editor also got a new shape healing feature, which fixes up small gaps between line segments that can be present in drawings imported from other CAD tools. This makes it easier to import board outlines, zones, and other complex shapes from mechanical CAD tools. Both of these features were contributed by Alex Shvartzkop.

In addition to new ways of getting data into KiCad, version 8 brings new ways to get data out. KiCad’s PCB editor now supports exporting boards to IPC-2581 format (Seth Hillbrand), an all-in-one data package that integrates the fabrication and assembly data for a board. The STEP exporter now has an option to export copper shapes along with the rest of the board geometry, for accurate electromagnetic simulation and other applications (Jean-Pierre Charras, Alex Shvartzkop). Last but not least, the schematic editor now supports exporting netlists in Cadence Allegro format (Youbao Zhang, David Schneider), supporting Allegro users who want to use KiCad as a schematic capture tool.

The KiCad CLI was initially launched with version 7, and has already seen a lot of use. With version 8, the CLI has seen a number of additions from Mark Roszko, Mike Williams, and other developers:

Graham Keeth has been hard at work updating KiCad’s documentation for Version 8. Thanks to his work, many of the new features and changes in KiCad 8 are already documented (which long-time users will know is a much better situation than in previous releases). In addition to documenting new features, Graham has been improving all areas of the documentation with updated screenshots, copy editing, and corrections. Our documentation translators have also been working to update the translated text so that up-to-date KiCad documentation is available in more languages.

The schematic editor in KiCad 8 features several new UI panels that can be shown and hidden via the View menu. The properties panel (Jon Evans), similar to the one found in the PCB editor in KiCad 7, allows fast editing of the properties of selected items (and is also now available in the symbol editor). The search panel (Mark Roszko) allows quick access to search results across large schematics. The net navigator (Wayne Stambaugh) shows the path a highlighted net takes across a complex hierarchical design.

In the past, customizing the data and formatting of a bill of materials exported from KiCad required the use of external tools such as Python scripts. For version 8, Mike Williams developed a brand-new BOM exporter built-in to KiCad, allowing you to select and reorder columns and control the formatting of exported BOMs from within the symbol fields table dialog. Once you are happy with an export style, save it as a preset for easy recall.

A new set of contextual tools in the schematic editor were added by Mike Williams: Pin Helpers allow you to create labels, wires, and no-connect markers from symbol pins in just a few clicks.

KiCad has been able to report that a symbol is different from its library version for a while (for example, due to you editing the symbol locally on the schematic, or updating the library version after placing the symbol on a schematic) but it is sometimes hard to tell what is different. To improve this situation, Jeff Young developed a comparison tool for symbols and footprints that shows a report and visual comparison between the schematic and library versions of a selected symbol:

Mike Williams and Jeff Young improved the grid preferences in the schematic editor and introduced grid overrides: a feature that forces a certain grid when performing operations (moving, placing, etc) on a certain type of object. With this feature enabled, you can switch between different grids for placing text, but always keep symbols and wires on a 50 mil grid to match with the symbol library pin spacing.

A long-standing difference between KiCad and some other EDA tools has been that KiCad’s power symbols (single-pin symbols with names such as VCC and GND) create net names based on their pin names, which can only be renamed in the symbol library editor, not after they have been placed on a schematic. For KiCad 8, Mike Williams removed this limitation, by making power symbols take their net name from their Value field rather than their pin name. This means that custom voltage rails can be created without creating additional symbols.

Jeff Young overhauled the user interface of the simulator for KiCad 8. In addition to having a more polished look and feel, the new simulator makes it possible to manage plots of many signals, take measurements with cursors and analytical functions, and plot power signals in addition to voltage and current.

The changes are not just to the user interface, though: there are four new simulation types that can be configured (pole-zero, noise, S-parameter, and FFT). Custom signals can be defined, meaning plots can be added for expressions such as V(/in) - V(/out), making it possible to visualize many more outputs of a simulation from within KiCad. Along these lines, operating point simulation results can now be visualized directly on the schematic canvas (Jeff Young):

KiCad 7 introduced a limited ability to drag footprints with tracks attached. In KiCad 8, this has been extended to allow dragging of more than one footprint at once (Jon Evans):

Alex Shvartzkop gave KiCad’s length tuning pattern tools a complete overhaul for version 8, and now tuning patterns are objects that can be selected, modified, and removed after they are initially placed. This greatly speeds up the process of modifying designs with controlled-length routing.

KiCad has historically drawn a distinction between electrically-connected objects such as pads, tracks, vias, and zones, and ordinary graphical shapes such as lines and polygons. The latter could be drawn on any PCB layer, but could not be assigned to a net without creating a footprint and using custom shape pads. For KiCad 8, Jon Evans removed this restriction, meaning that designers can draw complex copper geometry directly within the board editor, and import copper shapes from external CAD tools for applications such as RF, coil, and sensor design.

The properties panel, first introduced in the PCB editor in KiCad 7, has been expanded to the library editors in KiCad 8 by Jon Evans. This panel, which can be shown and hidden from the View menu, allows quick access to many properties of selected objects. Using it allows more efficient creation and modification of footprints, as things such as pad size and location can be changed with fewer clicks. As with many other places in KiCad, numeric fields in the properties panel support simple mathematical expression evaluation, meaning you can do things such as add an offset to a pad’s position without doing the math in your head.

Jeff Young reworked the user interface of the 3D viewer to feel more like the rest of the PCB editor. It now features an appearance panel, visibility presets, and viewports (saved camera positions). It is now much easier to control the visibility of different types of parts and layers of the board.