TL;DR: The KiCad 5.0 package is not yet at a stable status, as of March 1st, 2018. Wait until the official 5.0 stable is announced to switch.
Should you consider moving to version 5.0, since the new release candidates (rc1) are now being tested?
I don’t think so, yet. Watch below to learn more.
- Links from the video
- KiCad Hat: https://contextualelectronics.com/product/kicad-hat/
- Wayne’s talk: https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_kicad_v5/
- 5.0 nightly build: https://launchpad.net/~js-reynaud/+archive/ubuntu/kicad-5
- Download the stable build (4.0.7): http://kicad-pcb.org/download/
- Manufacturing: http://kicad.info/manufacturing/
- Forum: https://forum.kicad.info/
Has everyone moved to 5.0? Anyone?
I have it installed on the Lab PC and have started “playing with it”. I have not tried anything serious. Opening existing projects gives messages about component remapping. In the PCSNew layout, I get an error on the “Tools” menu. There are some other things different regarding the OpenGL mode (F11) - this is now called something else and is no longer in the View menu.
I have not made time to follow these through to know if they are issues or features used the wrong way.
[edit]
https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1783037
Thanks Steve. I’ve downloaded it but haven’t installed. I’ve started to search through some of the issues people are having so I know what to do.
Are you running 4.0.7 at the same time?
When I installed 5.0.0, it overwrites 4.0.7. So I don’t have that on this machine anymore
fixes the issue with the Tools menu - I just had to down load the latest installer for Windows.
I still have an issue with missing footprints on a couple of boards but I think this has to do with a footprints from other local libraries gone missing rather than a direct issue with PCBNew. Just not sure why or how yet.
Although I’ve been tempted, I haven’t installed version 5 yet. I was planning on using it for my next project, but was going to wait and see if there were issues with the initial release. I will most likely give it another month or two to let things settle down a bit before getting started. For the most part, at least from what I’ve seen on social media, people seem to like the new set of features that version 5 offers.