Have you tried another schematic editor prior to using KiCad 7?  If so, you can make yourself feel at home by adjusting certain preferences right now.

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Objectives

Previously in part 2, we created a circuit board in under 8 minutes.  Here in part 3, we will explore how to achieve the following:

• Customize KiCad’s base behaviors using preferences
• Customize individual projects using settings

Bear in mind, the odd-numbered parts of this tutorial series are optional.

Create or Open a Project                                  

Open the KiCad 7 application.  You can go about this exercise one of 2 ways…

1.  You can reopen the Arduino template project we did in part 2.  To do so, navigate to File -> Open Recent.  Then select that project from a list.

2.  Or you can create a new project by navigating to File –> New Project.  Give your project some time to load.  When it loads, open the schematic sheet by double-clicking the *.kicad_sch file.

Preferences vs. Settings

Generally, in KiCad 7, preferences are factors that change the behavior of KiCad itself.  Settings on the other hand will only affect the current project.

Print Settings     

For example: if I wanted to change the paper size from “A4” to “US Letter,” I would do so in print settings.  You can do the same by clicking the Page Settings icon near the top of the canvas while a schematic is in view.

The schematic’s title block is an area of the page reserved for the title, author, and other information related to the schematic.  The Page Settings dialog also includes text boxes that let you customize the title block.  For example:

• Set the issue date to the current date by clicking the 3 arrows
• Set Revision to B-5M1A
• Set Title = Experimental segment display
• Set Company = Voxidyne Media LLC

Optionally, you can add comments to the title block.

Sheet Settings

In the top-left corner, there’s an icon that looks like a drawing with a red sprocket over it.  This icon leads to the schematic setup editor.  Click the icon.

In the resulting dialog, notice the bottom area lets you import settings from other projects.  There is no need to use this feature in today’s exercise.  However, make a mental note of it in case it comes in handy later.  Press CANCEL to exit back to the schematic editor.

Preferences                                     

Back in the schematic editor, navigate to Preferences -> Preferences.

If you’ve migrated to KiCad 7 from a different layout program, your muscle memory may have given you a hard time in part 2.  You can address this by clicking the Mouse & Touchpad category on the left side.  Everything we covered in part 2 can be adjusted there.

Back on the left-hand side, the Hotkeys category lets you configure your shortcut keys.  I recommend not changing these unless you have a direct need to.  Otherwise, doing so could make the remainder of this tutorial series difficult to follow.

Note that if you have used KiCad before, you can get your old hotkeys back by importing them.  In Windows 10, I found these *.hotkey files located at path: Users/foo/AppData/Roaming/kicad/7.0, where foo is your own username.                               

Once again on the left side, the Data Collection category deals with the transmission of crash reports.  Read it carefully and decide for yourself if you have privacy concerns.

Resetting Defaults

Finally, if you ever decide to reset an entire category to its default, look for a category reset button at the bottom-left corner of the preferences windows.

This covers all the critical decision-making for the moment.  You can click OK to apply preferences, and then exit out of KiCad 7.

There are plenty of other options we have not covered yet, but those will make more sense later.

Upcoming Work                             

In the next part, we will add components using basic operations…                                           

• Add and delete
• Rotate and mirror
• Select and de-select
• And copy-paste

 

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