KICAD 4.0 IS released

If you’re a KiCad user, as lots of of us right here at Hackaday are, you’ll be elated to hear that KiCad 4.0 has just been released! If you’re not yet a KiCad user, or if you’ve provided it a shot in the past, now’s most likely a great time to provide it a try. (Or perhaps wait up until the inevitable 4.0.1 bugfix version comes out.)

If you’ve been utilizing the old “stable” version of KiCad (from may 2013!), you’ve got a great deal of catching-up to do.

The official part footprint libraries altered their style sometime in 2014, as well as are all now held on GitHub in separate “.pretty” folders for modularity as well as simplicity of updating. Unfortunately, this indicates that you’ll requirement to be a bit cautious with your jobs up until you’ve changed all the parts over. The strike is softened by a “component rescue helper” however you’re still going to requirement to be cautious if you’re still utilizing old schematics with the new version.

The a lot of fascinating change, from a fundamental PCB-layout perspective, is the push-and-shove router. We’re trying to find a new demo video online, however this from earlier this year will have to do for now. We’ve been utilizing different “unstable” develops of KiCad for the last two years just since of this feature, so it’s remarkable to see it out in an actual release. The push-and-shove router still has some quirks, as well as doesn’t have all the performance of the original routers, though, so we commonly discover ourselves changing back as well as forth. however when you requirement the push-and-shove feature, it’s awesome.

If you’re doing a board where timing is critical, KiCad 4.0 has a lot of differential trace as well as trace-length tuning choices that are something far beyond the last release. The 3D board rendering has likewise greatly improved.

Indeed, there are so lots of enhancements that have been made over the last two as well as a half years, that everybody we understand has been utilizing the nightly advancement develops of KiCad instead of the old steady version. If you’ve been doing the same, version 4.0 may not have all that much new for you. however if you’re new to KiCad, now’s a excellent time to jump in.

We’ve covered KiCad hacks before, as well as have one more post on KiCad add-on utilities in the pipeline as we compose this. For beginners, [Chris Gammell]’s tutorial video series is still relevant, as well as is a must-watch.

Thanks [LC] for the newsworthy tip!