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KiCad 6, Changes to the project, schematic file format
The update of KiCad to version 6 comes along with an new format for the
project and the symbols files which you will need to keep in mind for getting
an successful upgrade of your projects and the work environment done.
Before doing any processing please ensure you have made backups of your
projects and additional files (like local symbols, footprints etc.)!
The environment settings of your KiCad 5 version can be found in the folder
$(HOME)/.config/kicad
So please include this folder within your backups!
KiCad 6 comes with an option of possible side by side installation of various
major versions of KiCad. To get this goal KiCad is saving the environment
now in the folder:
$(HOME)/.config/kicad/$(MAJOR_VERSION).$(MINOR_VERSION)
Means for the Debian packages the environment files will be installed into:
$(HOME)/.config/kicad/6.0
To migrate your existing projects you mostly will just to open them with the
new KiCad version and save them directly, next do the same with the schematic
and the pcb editor
Please also note that you will need to update your personal symbol libraries
to get them usable with KiCad 6. It might also be needed to update some folder
settings within your symbol or also project setting to get external resources
included into your personal projects.
The following web resources contain further information you can use.
https://docs.kicad.org/6.0/en/introduction/introduction.html
https://www.kicad.org/blog/2021/12/KiCad-6.0.0-Release/
https://forum.kicad.info/
-- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de> Sun, 02 Jan 2021 14:50:00 +0100
KiCad 5, Availability of Spice based circuit simulation in Eeschema
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting with version 5.0.1+dfsg1-2 KiCad is built with ngspice support. Thus
you will find a new menu entry in Eeschema 'Tools -> Simulator' for circuit
simulation of your schematic. Please have a look into the documentation how to
use this feature.
-- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de> So, 14 Oct 2018 11:25:00 +0800
KiCad 5, Changes to the global Symbol and Footprint Table
---------------------------------------------------------
The KiCad application stores global settings for the schematic symbols in the
file
$(HOME)/.config/kicad/sym-lib-table
and for the footprints within
$(HOME)/.config/kicad/fp-lib-table
Both default settings have been changed in KiCad 5 due the changed names of the
libraries, unfortunately the kicad application isn't doing any automatic
migration. You need to make the adjustments by yourself within the editor for
the 'Symbol Libraries' (in Eeschema within the menu 'Preferences - Manage
Symbol Libraries...') and the editor for the 'Footprint Libraries" (in
Footprint Editor in the menu 'Preferences - Manage Footprint Libraries...')
Note:
It's mostly easier to backup the old files an re-adjust just your local needs
after a restart of KiCad. KiCad will recreate new default files if it can't
find any of the files in the .config folder.
-- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de> Mo, 23 Apr 2018 15:00:00 +0800
KiCad 5, the 'Modern Toolset (Accelerated)' in Gerbview or Pcbnew and Wayland
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you running your DE (Desktop Environment) under Wayland [1], a planned
replacement for X [2], and you have turned on the 'Modern Toolset (Accelerated)'
in Pcbnew or Gerbview you probably experience some strange things like crashes
of your complete DE session.
This happen due a issue within the wxWidget3.0 framework while running in a
Wayland session together with the GTK3 bindings against the wxWidget framework.
This is no problem inside KiCad. The bugtracker for KiCad is tracking this
issue on Launchpad in the bug report 1755360 [3] and the KiCad project has
made an announcement about the problem on the project website [4]. The origin
of the problem is tracked on the TRAC instance on wxwidgets.org [5].
Right now there is no easy solution for this regression. You can use some
workarounds to get KiCad working nevertheless.
1. Do not use the 'Modern Toolset (Accelerated)' and use instead the 'Modern
Toolset (Fallback)' option.
2. Run KiCad within a X11 session.
To do so you have also two options.
Option 1: Switch over to use X11 instead of the Wayland as base for your
DE. This requires a complete log off from your running DE session and
select 'X11' from the settings in your window manager before start the
window manager itself.
Option 2: Start KiCad (or the standalone applications) within a dedicated
X11 session by setting the environment variable 'GDK_BACKEND' to 'x11'
while calling pcbnew or gerbview. e.g.
$ GDK_BACKEND=x11 kicad
or
$ GDK_BACKEND=x11 pcbnew
How to check if I'm running a x11 or a Wayland session?
You can use this one liner to detect your session you running on. Please adjust
'YOUR_USER_NAME' with your login name.
$ loginctl show-session `loginctl|grep YOUR_USER_NAME|awk '{print $1}'` -p Type
If you get the following output your session is running within Wayland.
$ Type=wayland
[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1755360
[4] http://kicad.org/help/known-system-related-issues/#_wayland
[5] https://trac.wxwidgets.org/ticket/17702
-- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de> Sun, 8 Apr 2018 18:00:00 +0200
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