The KiCad project recently merged the Eeschema modern canvas code into the development branch. This represents a significant change in the way the schematics and symbols are rendered by using the same modern canvas code used in Pcbnew. The schematic and symbol editing tools will not use the advanced tool framework used in Pcbnew so there will be no new editing features such as advanced selection, snapping, etc. The advanced tool framework features will be introduced into Eeschema during version 6 development.

It is already a week since 5.0 has been released, meaning it is a good moment to sum up the release. Many Windows users have reported problems, most frequently related to wxWidgets assert dialogs showing up in pcbnew. The problem has been resolved, therefore if you still experience any issues please reinstall KiCad using the current Windows installer. There is still one problem that has appeared very late in the 5.

Almost a year after the release of KiCad 4.0.7, the KiCad development team is proud to present a new and improved KiCad 5.0 release! The stable release version 5.0.0 is made from the stable 5.0 branch. KiCad binaries should be available now or in the very near future for download for Windows, macOS and Linux. See the download page for guidance. Instructions for packagers can be found on the download page describing how to build from source .

As of version 5.0.0-rc2 (commit be0978f3 to be precise), there was a change made to the way the template path is determined. The ambiguous environment variable KICAD_PTEMPLATES has been deprecated and replaced by KICAD_TEMPLATE_DIR which by default should point to the template folder installed with KiCad. This path may not always be correct depending upon how KiCad was installed. At least it can be configured by the user if the default path is incorrect.

As of version 5.0.0-rc2 (commit 93c7f65d to be precise), there is a change in way the solder mask and solder paste clearances are determined. For pads defined with copper layers, the solder mask and solder paste clearance calculations remain the same. For pads defined with no copper layers (referred to as aperture pads), the inherited clearance and ratio settings are no longer applied and the pad is plotted as defined.

The KiCad project is proud to announce that the official KiCad libraries are now featured on the KiCad website. The library team has invested a large amount of time improving the standard of the KiCad libraries. As part of this effort, a new set of KiCad Library Conventions (KLC) are now available on the KiCad website at /libraries/klc. These conventions help to ensure that contributions to the libraries are held to a high standard.

The KiCad project recently merged the symbol library table code for accessing symbol libraries into the master branch. This represents a significant change in the way symbol libraries are defined and accessed. It is similar in design and function of the footprint library table and will resolve the long standing issue with symbol library ordering in Eeschema along with some new features such as platform independence and lazy library loading.

The KiCad project is proud to announce the support for importing Eagle projects. This is the outcome of work to complete the Eagle schematic file plugin and integrate it with the Eagle board file plugin. From the new "Import Project" menu entry in the KiCad launcher users may now select an Eagle schematic or board file and the new project name and location, after which the corresponding Eagle files will be imported respectively into EEschema and PcbNew.

The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest stable release of KiCad. The 4.0.7 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the last release. It also includes improved footprint, symbol, and 3D model libraries, translations, and documentation. The stable release version 4.0.7 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.

The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest stable release of KiCad. The 4.0.6 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the last release. One other notable change was the replacement of the Avhttp library with the libcurl library when building the GitHub plugin. This should allow Linux distributions that are not compatible with the OpenSSL library license to distribute KiCad with the GitHub plugin enabled.