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Upgrading from an old version of KICAD

 

Good morning all,
At work, we have used an old version (2012-01-19 BZR 3256) for a number of years. We have created many libraries and footprints of our own. These libraries and footprints coincide with our company policies, stock management system, and the PCB vendors that we typically use.
We also have some machines on Win7 and some on Win10

I am interested in upgrading to the newest version and am interested in learning about the growing pains that we will encounter when doing so.

I have been following along with this group for years, so I am aware that the formatting of the libraries and footprints has changed, so I know I will have a lot of work in that area, but I am not much of a coder or "software guy" so building, compiling, and editing files by hand will be challenging.

So, what guidance do you all have?

Thanks,
Albert
 

Hey Albert,

I am not certain but fairly sure that it will likely take no work from your end. I did a similar, although less drastic, migration when 5 was released and if I recall correctly there was a tool that popped up on start up that just converted everything completely hands off.?

I am not sure of you VCS solution or just the size of the libraries, but could you isolate a version and just try? Then if all goes well you can attempt it for real??

On a side note, you may want to protect you time and wait until 6 is released since it has breaking file changes. Once you go, you can't come back. Plus there are all sorts of nice fancy new features!

Craig

On Tue, 19 Oct 2021, 18:11 Albert Marsh, <hitekgearhead@...> wrote:
Good morning all,
At work, we have used an old version (2012-01-19 BZR 3256) for a number of years. We have created many libraries and footprints of our own. These libraries and footprints coincide with our company policies, stock management system, and the PCB vendors that we typically use.
We also have some machines on Win7 and some on Win10

I am interested in upgrading to the newest version and am interested in learning about the growing pains that we will encounter when doing so.

I have been following along with this group for years, so I am aware that the formatting of the libraries and footprints has changed, so I know I will have a lot of work in that area, but I am not much of a coder or "software guy" so building, compiling, and editing files by hand will be challenging.

So, what guidance do you all have?

Thanks,
Albert

 

Thanks for the input Craig. I seem to recall a couple years ago that there was a file format change for the modules and footprints. That was my main concern. I also recall people mentioning scripts that could be run that would convert one type to another. I do not relish the idea of redrawing all of the items we have in our libraries. Luckily, a great number of the parts share the same footprint, such as 0805, or soic-8.

I also was thinking along the same lines as you in regards to an isolated install. I planned on copying our current libraries over to a non-networked laptop and trying it from there.

Thanks again.

-Albert
 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Albert
Marsh via groups.io
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2021 8:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [kicad-users] Upgrading from an old version of KICAD

Thanks for the input Craig. I seem to recall a couple years ago that there was a
file format change for the modules and footprints. That was my main concern. I
also recall people mentioning scripts that could be run that would convert one
type to another. I do not relish the idea of redrawing all of the items we have in
our libraries. Luckily, a great number of the parts share the same footprint,
such as 0805, or soic-8.
I've been using nightly versions for production work and have a number of parts I have to use in older library formats (eg: anything downloaded from the 'net is generally still in the older format). The 5.99 version will open these parts, but you will not be able to edit them. You have several options, which is best will depend on how much interoperating you plan to do with the two different versions.

* Keep all libraries in the old format. The 5.99 builds will read these just fine, but you'll have to run 5.x to make any updates. This is the best option if you still need to support earlier versions for a while.

* Write old-version components you need to edit to a new format library. This is what I do since I'm mostly grabbing footprints from online. I am only working with 5.99, so I save the old version part in the new format where I can make any tweaks or changes desired, and I don't care about updating the original source.

* Convert everything to the new formats. You'll probably want to do this eventually, but probably not as a first step!

--
Charles Steinkuehler
cstein@...
 

For what it's worth, I went to SnapEDA and downloaded the LM555 symbol/footprint in V3 and V4 formats (they don't have V5 or V6 yet) using 5.99 and it worked fine.

On 2021-10-20 10:42 a.m., Charles Steinkuehler wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Albert
Marsh via groups.io
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2021 8:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [kicad-users] Upgrading from an old version of KICAD

Thanks for the input Craig. I seem to recall a couple years ago that there was a
file format change for the modules and footprints. That was my main concern. I
also recall people mentioning scripts that could be run that would convert one
type to another. I do not relish the idea of redrawing all of the items we have in
our libraries. Luckily, a great number of the parts share the same footprint,
such as 0805, or soic-8.
I've been using nightly versions for production work and have a number of parts I have to use in older library formats (eg: anything downloaded from the 'net is generally still in the older format). The 5.99 version will open these parts, but you will not be able to edit them. You have several options, which is best will depend on how much interoperating you plan to do with the two different versions.

* Keep all libraries in the old format. The 5.99 builds will read these just fine, but you'll have to run 5.x to make any updates. This is the best option if you still need to support earlier versions for a while.

* Write old-version components you need to edit to a new format library. This is what I do since I'm mostly grabbing footprints from online. I am only working with 5.99, so I save the old version part in the new format where I can make any tweaks or changes desired, and I don't care about updating the original source.

* Convert everything to the new formats. You'll probably want to do this eventually, but probably not as a first step!

--
Charles Steinkuehler
cstein@...

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