Do you do PCB design for a living? Has KiCad been just a tiny bit insufficient for your lightning-fast board routing demands? We’ve just been graced with the KiCad 9 release (blog post, there’s a FOSDEM talk too), and it brings features of the rank you expect from a professional-level monthly-subscription PCB design suite.
Of course, KiCad 9 has delivered a ton of polish and features for all sorts of PCB design, so everyone will have some fun new additions to work with – but if you live and breathe PCB track routing, this release is especially for you.
One of the most flashy features is multichannel design – essentially, if you have multiple identical blocks on your PCB, say, audio amplifiers, you can now route it once and then replicate the routing in all other blocks; a stepping stone for design blocks, no doubt.
Other than that, there’s a heap of additions – assigning net rules in the schematic, dragging multiple tracks at once, selectively removing soldermask from tracks and tenting from vias, a zone fill manager, in/decrementing numbers in schematic signal names with mousewheel scroll, alternate function display toggle on symbol pins, improved layer selection for layer switches during routing, creepage and acute angle DRC, DRC marker visual improvements, editing pad and via stacks, improved third-party imports (specifically, Eagle and Altium schematics), and a heap of other similar pro-level features big and small.
Regular hackers get a load of improvements to enjoy, too. Ever wanted to add a table into your schematic? Now that’s doable out of the box. How about storing your fonts, 3D ..
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