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KiCad 4.0.4 Stable Release

Hot on the heels of stable release 4.0.3, there is a new stable release of KiCad. The 4.0.4 stable version contains a few critical fixes that slipped through the cracks in the last release. The stable release version 4.0.4 is made from the stable 4.0 branch with bug fixes cherry picked from the development branch of KiCad. KiCad binaries are available or will be available in the near future for download for Windows, OSX and Linux, see the download page for guidance.
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KiCad Switches to Git for Version Control

The moment all of you Git fans have been waiting for has finally arrived! As of August 21st, 2016 the official version control system for the development repository for KiCad is now Git instead of Bazaar. The decision was made to stick with Launchpad as the hosting site rather than move to Github in order to keep our existing bug tracker history. The development team decided that the Lauchpad Git integration had reached a sufficient level of maturity to make the switch.
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KiCad 4.0.3 Stable Release

A new stable release of KiCad has been released. The 4.0.3 stable version contains many bug fixes, OSX touch pad improvements, and improved translations. This release contains a new snapshot of the documentation and libraries. It also has the latest changes from the kicad-i18n repo, which now contains complete GUI translations for the following languages: de, fr, it, ja, ru, pl, zh_CN and es. The stable release version 4.0.3 is made from the lp:kicad/4.
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New 3DViewer

After almost 15 months in development and testing, the new 3DViewer developed by Mario Luzeiro has been merged with the product branch in revision 6985 http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/product/revision/6985 and has since been available in the nightly builds of KiCad. This viewer was written entirely from scratch and takes advantage of the 3D plugin system to provide visualization of all 3D model formats supported by available 3D plugins. Features include: Two new render targets: OpenGL (GPU accelerated), and ray tracing with post-processing effects.
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KiCad Hackathon At CERN

A cadre of KiCad developers including Wayne Stambaugh, Tom Wlostowski, Maciej (Orson) Suminski, and Simon Richter along with some potential new developers Michele Castellana and Alejandro García Montoro gathered at CERN for a KiCad hackathon the week of July 4th to July 10th organized by CERN’s Javier Serrano. There was even enough time to take a trip to visit the KiCad project founder Jean-Pierre Charras. It would be a gross understatement to say that a good time was had by all.
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In Development: 3D Plugins

Seasoned KiCad users are familiar with the venerable 3DViewer tool which has traditionally been used to help verify design by visual inspection and to create images of what a project may look like when it is finished. Historically the 3DViewer could only process a very limited implementation of the VRML2 (aka VRML97) specification as produced by the Wings3D modeler. In the past two years various developers contributed support for VRML1 and a very limited implementation of X3D, which improved the support for VRML generated by FreeCAD.
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KiCad 4.0.2 more bugfixes

A new release of KiCad has been made, containing only minor bug fixes. This release does not contain a new snapshot of the docs or libs. It does have the latest changes from the kicad-i18n repo, which contains the GUI translations for KiCad. As last time, version 4.0.2 is made from the lp:kicad/4.0 branch with some cherry picked changes from the development branch. KiCad binaries will be available for download for Windows, OSX and Linux in the near future, see the download page for guidance.
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KiCad 4.0.1 minor bugfixes

A new release of KiCad has been made, containing some minor bug fixes. These are related to the default path issue seen on Windows where the KISYMOD and KISYS3DMOD was not set properly. They are now set as environment variables by the installer such that they match your installation directory. In addition to that, a few fixes for the GAL canvas has been applied and a bug fix for the KiCad manager where it could potentially crash.
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KiCad 4.0.0 is Out!

We’ve just released the long-awaited KiCad stable release, version 4.0.0! The announcement can be read on the developer’s mailing list archive. Version 4.0.0 is made from the product branch BZR 6336. This is 148 commits after the last release candidate, RC2. These are all changes to improve stability and usability of KiCad. KiCad binaries will be available for download for Windows, OSX and Linux in the near future, see the download page for guidance.
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KiCad 4.0.0 RC2

Now, approximately two months after the first release candidate we can now announce the second release candidate, 4.0.0 RC2, this is BZR 6303 from the product branch. Since the previous release candidate 115 commits have been made to fix bugs reported by users and developers alike. The 4.0 source code branch is available in the BZR repository on launchpad here: KiCad 4.0 Branch The RC2 branch has been packaged as a source archive available here: KiCad 4.
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