After the year of development published the release of the free system of automated design of printed circuit boards kicad 7.0.0 . This is the first significant issue, formed after the transition of the project under the wing of Linux Foundation. Assemblies prepared for various distributions of Linux, Windows and MacOS. The code is written on C ++ using the library wxwidgets and spreads under the license gplv3.
KICAD provides funds for editing electrical circuits and printed circuit boards, 3D visualization of the board, working with the library of elements of electrical circuits, manipulations with templates in format Gerber , simulations of electronic schemes, editing printed circuit boards and project management. The project also provides libraries of electronic components, seats and 3D models. According to some printed circuit boards manufacturers, about 15% of orders are received with the provision of schemes prepared in Kicad.
Among changes in the new issue:
- In the editors of the schemes, printed circuit boards and format frames, it is possible to use any system fonts.
- Support for text blocks has been added to the editors of the schemes and printed circuit boards.
- Added support for 3DConnexion SpaceUuse, options for the manipulator mouse for navigation in three -dimensional and two -dimensional environment. Supporting specific manipulations for SpaceUase appeared in the editor of the schemes, a symbol library, printed circuit editor and 3D examiner. Working with SpaceUuse is so far available only in Windows and MacOS (in the future it is planned to provide work in Linux using Libspacenav).
- The collection of information on the operation of the application for reflection in reports sent during emergency completion. To track events, collecting information about errors and forming Crash Dampov, the platform is involved sentry . The transmitted melon on the emergency completion of KICAD is processed using the Sentry cloud service. In the future, it is planned to organize telemetry collection with performance metrics on the basis of Sentry, reflecting information on how long certain commands have been performed. Sending reports is still done only in Windows assemblies and requires the clear consent of the user (OPT-in).
- to the plugin and content manager, the possibility of automatically checking the availability of updates for the set packages and the removal of the notification with the proposal of their installation was added. By default, the check is disabled and requires activation in the settings.
