KiCad 7 my overview

Some time since KiCad 7 was released, I have been using it a bit of time already and some of the new features implemented must say they are really useful. It is a tool that I would recommend, at least for Hobby, Home usage due to the fact it is fully valid for this environment, it is free software, so you can do with it whatever you want, and it has a big community supporting it. (Also for professional use would be more than capable tool)

I would like to share the most useful or important upgrades for me on this last version, I would say that even considering the step was a mayor change I did not see a huge change on its functionality.

• Text Boxes: I consider that well documented schematics is one of the most important things while designing. Adding key points, reminders, notes..., helps you to have better develop schematics and also being able to remember key fact while not only writing schematics but also when moving to layout.

• Diagonal Dragging, makes moving components much easier, in previous versions while dragging a component on schematics, the lines or tracks attached to it were moving with the component but in random angles, but with this new Diagonal Dragging, the lines just break in 90 degree angles making the results much better organized and synchronized.
• Off Grid ERC Warning, this feature is critical while moving from Schematics to PCBs, other ECAD tools already had this check implemented long time ago, making it impossible to have errors while transferring the Schematic to the PCB if any of the components was out of grid, resulting in not connected components so a bad PCB. I give to this new implemented ERC checking a 10/10.
• Do not populate, it is a feature that was not available in previous versions, so you needed to add a specific parameter into the component or symbol to be able to write manually if it was intended to be populated or not. In this case now with the new version 7, there is a box that you can select or not to have the component populated or not.

• Property Panel on PCB editor is now available. We won't have now a new window each time we select a pad, component, track... and we want to see the properties or modify them. Now we have a new panel on the side that show us all these parameters without need a new small window to be opened.

• Unroute selected allow us to unroute a track which correspond to a selected net, in a way we don't need to select all the sections corresponding to that net, just selecting one of them and doing right-click and unroute track we would be able to remove all the corresponding track.

There are other several new features, like for example Database Libraries that for the moment I have not used which might be quite useful to create your own database with often used components, which before was not so easy, and also another features on the layout editor for semi auto routing, which I am not really fan but might help to start with the layout.

If you want to take a look at the full release, you can go HERE

Still, I miss some features which would help us to create better and "easier" PCBs. I must say that from my perspective the Schematic tool is much more complete or with all the features I need than the PCB tool, the reason is that I still miss a bit more flexibility while for example creating custom polygons or copper areas that right now requires creating a Phyton scrip to be able to have for example a custom shape copper fill. Also, maybe a bit more integration with a version control (SVN) and more tools which help you while developing really complex PCBs. I've seen anyway complex design with KiCad, so we need to understand that these complaints are for sure everything unless a NO-GO for you to start using this great tools.

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