kicad

KiCad 5.1.6 released

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Screenshot from 2020-05-16 21-51-10

KiCad 5.1.6 has been released:

The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest series 5 stable release. The 5.1.6 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the 5.1.5 release. It also includes improved footprint, symbol, and 3D model libraries, translations, and documentation.

This is also the first stable point release made since switching to gitlab for main kicad source code hosting.

A list of all of the fixed bugs since the 5.1.5 release can be found on the KiCad 5.1.6 milestone page. This release contains several critical bug fixes so please consider upgrading as soon as possible.

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KiCad 5.1.6 released

KiCad and FreeCAD meetup with Anool on Sat. May 2nd

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There will be another KiCAD and FreeCAD meetup tomorrow with Anool on Saturday, May 2nd, at:

  • 9:00 US EDT / 13:30 UTC / 15:30 CEST / 19:00 India

TechDraw basics – I’ll demo using the FreeCAD TECHDRAW workbench to produce dimension drawings of KiCAD PCB.

Sometimes, it is useful to add this to project documentation.

Will try & answer questions too.

Join the Jitsi Meeting

 

KiCad and FreeCAD meetup with Anool on Sat. May 2nd

KiCad Development Highlight: Altium PCB Importer

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Exciting news from the KiCad blog:

import-non-kicad

Altium PCB Importer

As a preview of a feature coming in the next major release, the ability to import Altium PcbDoc files is now available in the latest nightly builds. This was thanks to the work of Thomas Pointhuber in MR#60

The board import option can be found under the File > Import Non-Kicad Board File option and changing the file type filter

import-non-kicad-filter

 

After selecting your PcbDoc file and a short delay. Pcbnew will display it’s best attempt at a import and provide warnings if it had any difficulties importing the file.

import-non-kicad-pcbdoc-complete

If you want to give the board import a spin, simply download the latest KiCad nightly and take it for a spin. Feel free to report any issues.

Both this feature and nightly builds are in development, please only use them for testing and experimentation

KiCad Development Highlight: Altium PCB Importer

Intro to Python scripting in KiCad

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Great introduction to Python scripting in KiCad from Maciej ‘Orson’ Suminski:

“The Python Whisperer Guide”

The Python scripting interface in KiCad is a powerful tool that can relieve you from repetitive and tedious tasks. It is also a great method to address issues that are specific to your workflow and are not likely to be solved in the upstream code. In this talk, I will show you how to start your scripting adventure with KiCad by explaining the principles of python scripting and exploring a few examples. Do not be afraid…pythons are not venomous.

Screenshot from 2020-04-20 16-55-50Slides are available:

Screenshot from 2020-04-24 12-22-27

Intro to Python scripting in KiCad

Altium to KiCad converter

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BeagleBone-Black-Altium-KiCad-e1586729430477

Around these parts we tend to be exponents of the KiCad lifestyle; what better way to design a PCBA than with free and open source tools that run anywhere? But there are still capabilities in commercial EDA packages that haven’t found their way into KiCad yet, so it may not always be the best tool for the job. Altium Designer is a popular non-libre option, but at up to tens of thousands of USD per seat it’s not always a good fit for users and businesses without a serious need.

It’s hard to find an exciting photo of a dialog box

What do you do as a KiCad user who encounters a design in Altium you’d like to work with? Well as of April 3rd 2020, [Thomas Pointhuber] has merged the beginnings of a native Altium importer into KiCad which looks to be slated for the 6.0 release. As [Thomas] himself points out in the patch submission, this is hardly the first time a 3rd party Altium importer has been published. His new work is a translation of the Perl plugin altium2kicad by [thesourcerer8]. And back in January another user left a comment with links to four other (non-KiCad) tools to handle Altium files.

If you’d like to try out this nifty new feature for yourself, CNX has a great walkthrough starting at building KiCad from source. As for documents to test against the classic BeagleBone Black sources seen above can be found at on GitHub. Head past the break to check out the very boring, but very exciting video of the importer at work, courtesy of [Thomas] himself. We can’t wait to give this a shot!

via Altium has its 2kicad Moment — Hackaday

Quote

Altium Board importer for KiCad

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Thomas Pointhuber got Twitter excited yesterday with this video of importing Altium design into KiCad: 

Thomas Pointhuber has been developing an Altium importer and it was finally merged into KiCad:

Altium Board importer

This is the foundation to add support for native Altium import. Contributions are very welcome, because this is a quite some amount of work.

The work is mainly based on https://github.com/thesourcerer8/altium2kicad, which is an existing Altium Designer -> KiCad converter written in Perl. Because Altium Circuit Studio and Altium Circuit Maker uses quite similar file formats, I try to support them as well in one go.

My current workflow is to try to understand the existing code, and build a binary documentation of the Altium format using Kaitai Struct. This allows fast iterations, and tells me if something is parsed incorrect.

CNX Software has a nice blog post on how to build the development version of KiCad:

Screenshot from 2020-04-05 18-03-15

How to Build KiCad on Ubuntu 18.04 and Import Altium PCB Files

KiCad open-source EDA (Electronics Design Automation) suite software is now very popular, and many new projects are designed with the utility. AFAIK, some companies like Olimex switched all their new designs to KiCAD. But since many schematics and PCB layouts have been designed with other tools like EAGLE, Orcad Allegro, or Altium PCB design tools, it would be nice to be able to import those designs into KiCad.

Screenshot from 2020-04-05 18-36-18Screenshot from 2020-04-05 18-36-27

Altium Board importer for KiCad

PCB Artwork with Inkscape and KiCad

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Anool is doing live streams every Saturday on KiCad and this week Bradan Lane joined to show how to use Inkscape to create PCB artwork:

PCB Artwork with Inkscape and KiCad

Join two KiCad livestreams TODAY

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Screenshot from 2020-04-01 16-17-56

At 9:00 AM US PDT today, April 1st, KiCad leader developer Seth Hillbrand will be hosting a KiCad Community meetup video conference on Jisti Meet:

Last week’s meetup was nice to see and talk with other KiCad users. Let’s do it again this week.

This week, I’m happy to answer questions and I’ll be working through designing a KiCad version of the Medtronic OpenVentilator project (http://www.medtronic.com/openventilator 5). You may have heard that Medtronic (a multi-billion $ company) bought the company that cancelled the original gov’t contract 2 for low-cost ventilators in 2015 and then this week released a “kind of” open source version 3 of their current (not low-cost) ventilator.

In reality, they released scans of the schematics and some word documents for bring-up procedures. I’m going to see if we can turn the scans into a set of useful KiCad schematics + board files. This still doesn’t get to what’s needed to actually recreate more of these ventilators but it is a needed first step.

If you are curious about recreating designs from incomplete schematics, reverse engineering in KiCad or just want to hang out and chat, please stop by.

Then at 12:00 PM US PDT, Piotr Esden will livestream KiCad board layout:

Electronics Let’s Play – iCEBreaker-bitsy update/design work Ep. 3

Screenshot from 2020-04-01 16-15-10

Join two KiCad livestreams TODAY