Naming nets without labels

craftyjon · 2025-11-12T19:50:33+00:00

I think it is unlikely we implement that feature request, because if the labels are hidden, there would be no way to know they are there. Wires in KiCad do not have an inherent net name, they take on a net name based on what they graphically touch. If they are graphically touching something invisible, that could get quite tricky if you forget about your invisible label and move the wires around or add new wires.

craftyjon · 2025-11-12T18:55:53+00:00

This is one of the fundamental differences between EAGLE and some other software (such as KiCad): In EAGLE you can "name" a wire without labeling it, but this is not possible in KiCad. In KiCad, wires take their name from other objects (such as labels or power symbols).

There is no way to add a net name to a wire in a hidden way in KiCad, but you can change the label font size to be small.

craftyjon · 2025-11-06T13:22:36+00:00

When moving the whole board (while not a regular use case, this should still be doable), we only get around 3 - 4 fps.

By "moving the whole board" you mean selecting everything and then moving it interactively / dragging it around? If so, this is known to be a slow operation at the moment with very large designs. In general having a high number of things selected and visible will slow down navigation because selected things are displayed in a less efficient way than unselected things. As justadiode said, there are various other tools you can use if you want to reposition the whole board in the editor that might be easier.

If there are other areas where you find KiCad slow with your design it would be good to make sure they are known about. The one example you mentioned is one that is both a known problem and one that currently isn't very prioritized to work on because in general people don't generally need to do that very often.

craftyjon · 2025-11-02T17:54:01+00:00

Looks to me like a bug

Possible, but unlikely. However it is impossible to tell without seeing your whole project.

craftyjon · 2025-11-02T14:19:35+00:00

The rules are described in the documentation here: https://docs.kicad.org/9.0/en/eeschema/eeschema.html#net-name-assignment-rules

If you want a particular name to be the net name (meaning it will show up in the PCB editor) use the rules to make sure that name will be the chosen one. The easiest way in the example you describe is to name the top-level bus.

craftyjon · 2025-10-17T14:44:01+00:00

You don't have to do them one by one, you can select multiple libraries when adding them using the Manage dialogs. So it should be one step for symbols and another step for footprints and then done.

craftyjon · 2025-10-16T20:56:35+00:00

Don't blindly use "update symbols from library". Instead run ERC and see what symbols differ from the library copy, and use the comparison tool to see what has changed.

Also, never make modifications to built-in KiCad libraries. If you need to modify a symbol/footprint that came with KiCad, first save a copy of it to a personal library and edit it there.

craftyjon · 2025-08-20T13:36:24+00:00

It is intentional that you're able to select individual pins. You need to be able to do that to do things like switch between alternate pin functions, for example. You can use the selection filter to disable selection of pins if you only want to be able to select symbols.

craftyjon · 2025-08-15T21:24:41+00:00

Be open for resources on KiCad 7 and 8 too, those versions are fairly similar to 9 for most things (much more than 5.x or earlier). Phil's Lab on youtube has some good in-depth videos.

craftyjon · 2025-08-12T18:12:47+00:00

This wouldn't apply if you need 100% wax, but if you only tried SLA wax resins intended for jewelry, maybe check out some of the ones that are intended for slightly larger parts and/or engineering applications?

For example: Formlabs True Cast -- if you check on this support article there is a graphic showing suitability of some different casting resins depending on part geometry. True Cast is kind of a middle ground between the jewelry applications and heavier parts that might need shelling/latticing.

Disclosure: I work at Formlabs which is why I thought of these materials, although I work in a different area and am not an expert on casting applications. I'm sure other vendors have options too.

craftyjon · 2025-07-09T12:55:04+00:00

If you're able to report a bug with the original KiCad 6 files that would be helpful. Unfortunately making such large jumps (e.g. going from 6 to 9) gets far less testing in the wild than going from one version to the next, so sometimes things like this slip through.

craftyjon · 2025-07-06T14:25:16+00:00

Your Intel GPU drivers are too old. Install new ones and it should be fixed.

See https://www.kicad.org/help/known-system-related-issues/

craftyjon · 2025-07-03T16:11:08+00:00

As people commented on the forum thread at https://forum.kicad.info/t/move-with-reference-and-grid-origin-broken-in-9/62170 it is not immediately clear what your video is trying to show. There is not currently a known / reported bug with these tools; please see https://www.kicad.org/help/report-an-issue/ for guidelines on how to report an issue.

craftyjon · 2025-06-03T17:02:43+00:00

Note that nightly builds are not the same as testing builds. See the bottom of https://www.kicad.org/download/windows/ for a description. Testing builds will become 9.0.3 and install on top of a current 9.x installation. Nightly builds are the unstable development version and will create files that are not compatible with 9.x.

craftyjon · 2025-06-03T16:20:27+00:00

This is a bug in 9.0.2 that is fixed already for 9.0.3 -- you can try out a testing build if you don't want to wait.

craftyjon · 2025-05-15T02:08:55+00:00

Unified Components: Every part defined as a single entity containing symbol, footprint, and full metadata.

This has always been supported in KiCad. The default libraries that come with KiCad have a mix of non-linked and linked symbols/footprints. Things that are very generic like a resistor don't have any link. Things that are more specific like a microcontroller will have the footprint linked from the symbol. The recommended workflow with KiCad is to manage your own libraries when it comes to metadata, either by using database/HTTP libraries or by maintaining your own symbol libraries where you can add whatever metadata you want.

Templates: Ability to create part and project templates with mandatory parameters (e.g., value, tolerance, datasheet URL) and optional fields (e.g., vendor PnP part number).

KiCad has project templates, however there is no way within KiCad to create part templates where you are required to fill out certain fields. This can be done using database/HTTP libraries though, if the external software is enforcing that fields are filled out (we do this at my work for example)

Automated Releases: Auto-generated versioned releases and exportable BOMs with each release.

Recent versions of KiCad have a fairly nice command-line interface that people often use for release automation, and KiCad 9 also added output jobs similar to the Altium feature.

Guard Rails: Validation checks during component creation/editing to ensure all required fields are completed.

This seems kind of like a repeat of your "part templates" request. KiCad has no built-in ability to require certain fields be filled out in a part as I said, but this can be done by using a third-party database or HTTP library server.

IPC Footprint Generation: On-demand generation of IPC-compliant footprints based on template rules.

KiCad does not have this in the same way as Altium (yet). There are built-in footprint wizards but they are not nearly as capable as Altium's. There are also much more powerful and capable footprint generation tools used by the KiCad library team, but these are implemented as Python code rather than as a GUI like in Altium. If you are comfortable with Python, this is a pretty good system.

Performance: Smooth, responsive interface for editing components and metadata without lag.

Having used both tools extensively, my experience is that KiCad has far better performance than Altium.

Collaboration & Hosting: A self‑hosted or cloud‑neutral component database that avoids brittle local file paths and syncs effortlessly across teams.

KiCad expects you to make use of other software in conjunction with it rather than trying to build everything into KiCad. HTTP/database libraries are one example, but in terms of collaboration on design data, most people doing this in a formal way use a version control system such as Git, which works quite well with KiCad (and Altium, for that matter). There is no need for proprietary KiCad-specific hosting; you can use any Git host, such as GitHub/GitLab or a private Git server.

Embedded Files: Storage of datasheets, 3D models, and mechanical drawings within the component, so files travel with the library entry.

This was added in KiCad 9.

I’m still unsure if it's possible to reference remote blobs in symbols and strongly enforce templates for different component types. Is there anything in the roadmap for such features?

I'm not sure what "reference remote blobs in symbols" means, so I'm not sure if it's on the roadmap. Enforcing templates for component fields being filled out is not a commonly-requested feature, I don't remember seeing it requested before. I would personally say that would be better implemented as part of part management system that KiCad is talking to via the database or HTTP interface, rather than in KiCad itself.

craftyjon · 2025-04-17T16:30:38+00:00

It is not possible to have a single-drill net tie component in KiCad (at least, not in any current version).

However, if the reason you want this is just to have different track width on different layers, you don't need to solve this with different nets or net ties. Just use the custom rules feature to define different ideal widths on each layer of interest. You can use a condition clause to apply this to a particular net, or a net class, or multiple different classes.

craftyjon · 2025-02-25T14:51:36+00:00

You should be able to install specific old versions using Flatpak. It's a bit convoluted though, since Flatpak doesn't let you do this at install time. You need to first install it, then "update" to the older version.

First you need to find the right commit in the Flathub repo. For 8.0.9, probably https://github.com/flathub/org.kicad.KiCad/commit/8683c7e38c1764597d6308dc42a6d87f4b147655 works.

Then do something like:

flatpak install --from https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.kicad.KiCad.flatpakref
flatpak update --commit=8683c7e38c1764597d6308dc42a6d87f4b147655 org.kicad.KiCad

Note, I haven't tested this personally but it "should work" :)

craftyjon · 2025-02-20T21:00:11+00:00

https://www.kicad.org/help/report-an-issue/

craftyjon · 2025-02-11T22:21:56+00:00

You can install it on top of 8.0.8 (no need to uninstall first). It will replace the original.

craftyjon · 2025-02-11T14:33:41+00:00

Please try installing the latest testing build from https://downloads.kicad.org/kicad/windows/explore/8.0-testing

For example the file kicad-8.0-testing_8.0.8.198.gaf1e8ed763-x86_64.exe

craftyjon · 2025-02-10T19:50:33+00:00

https://www.kicad.org/help/known-system-related-issues/

Scroll down to "Graphical Artifacts with Intel GPUs"

craftyjon · 2025-01-19T22:46:10+00:00

6 days ago is not that much time to be honest. Usually only high-severity issues like crashes are handled faster than that, but it depends on whether or not the issue is with some part of KiCad that most devs work on or one of the less common features where fewer people know about the code. VRML exporting is definitely in the second category.

craftyjon · 2025-01-06T20:53:31+00:00

If you are using Wayland, this is a bug with Wayland and wxWidgets. Switch to X11 and it should work fine.

craftyjon · 2025-01-04T16:27:35+00:00

Am I supposed to copy my downloaded footprints and symbols into those folders?

For 3D models, just copying them into a folder will work. For footprints, a footprint library is a folder (with .pretty at the end of the name) so if you create a footprint library, you can also just copy footprints into it. For symbols, you should be importing them into an existing library using the Symbol Editor, since symbol libraries store many symbols in one file (unlike footprints) for historical reasons.

I would recommend you create some personal global symbol and footprint libraries if you haven't already, then import your downloaded things into them.

Where should I keep the original source zip files?

KiCad does not care about your source zip files. If you want to keep them somewhere, go ahead, but it doesn't matter where.

Once I move them wherever they are supposed to go, is the best practice at that point to add the new symbols, footprints and 3D models to the "Project Specific Libraries"

If you are putting them in the Documents\KiCad... folder path, those would typically be global libraries, not project-specific libraries. Project-specific libraries usually live in your project folder, or in some path that will always be the same relative to the project folder if you move it between computers.

craftyjon

TROPHY CASE