CEP014 – Moving to KiCad V6 with Jon Evans
Topics discussed
Intro: KiCad v6 and guest developer John
John's background and contributing to open source
Developer community and industry input
KiCad v6 goals: usability and feature parity
UI philosophy and avoiding feature bloat
Accessing nightly builds and versioning
Demo: New selection and interaction model
New icon pack and visual consistency
Net classes and controlled impedance
PCB view presets and layer navigation
User base demographics and growth drivers
Ecosystem, plugins, and community support
Bug reporting and rapid response culture
KiCad Surfaces and upcoming conference
Explaining Design Rule Checks (DRC)
Real-time DRC and push-and-shove routing
Custom rules and constraint scripting
Python API and automation capabilities
Demo: Using the Python console
Other v6 features and workflow improvements
Market adoption and collaboration challenges
Outro: Resources and call to action
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