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 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 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 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 Sun, 8 Apr 2018 18:00:00 +0200