KiCad

KiCad is capable of running on a wide variety of hardware and operating systems, but some tasks may be slower or more difficult on lower-end hardware. For the best experience, a dedicated graphics card and display with 1920x1080 or higher resolution is recommended.

Please check the KiCad website for the latest system requirements: https://kicad.org/help/system-requirements/

KiCad creates and uses files with the following specific file extensions (and folders) for schematic and board editing.

Project manager file:

Schematic editor files:

Board editor files and folders:

Common files:

Other files:

Other files:

They are generated by KiCad for fabrication or documentation.

Storing and and sending KiCad files

KiCad schematic and board files contain all the schematic symbols and footprints used in the design, so you can back up or send these files by themselves with no issue. Some important design information is stored in the project file (.kicad_pro), so if you are sending a complete design, make sure to include it.

Some files, such as the project local settings file (.kicad_prl) and the fp-info-cache file, are not necessary to send with your project. If you use a version control system such as Git to keep track of your KiCad projects, you may want to add these files to the list of ignored files so that they are not tracked.

Each major release of KiCad has its own configuration, so that you may run multiple KiCad versions on the same computer without the configurations interfering. The first time you run a new version of KiCad, you will be asked how to initialize the settings:

If a previous version of KiCad is detected, you will have the option to import the settings from that version. The location of the previous configuration files is detected automatically, but you may override it to choose another location if desired.

Please note that, the schematic symbol and footprint library tables from the previous version of KiCad will not be imported.

You may also choose to start with default settings if you do not want to import settings from a previous version.

KiCad stores the settings files in a folder inside your user directory. Each KiCad version will store its settings in a subfolder of that folder (except for KiCad 5.1 and earlier, which did not use subfolders). Those folders are:

Modern versions of KiCad can open files created in earlier versions, but can only write files in the latest formats. This means that in general, there are no special steps to migrate files from a previous version besides opening the files. In some cases, the file extension for a file has changed from one KiCad version to the next. After opening these files, they will be saved in the new format with the new file extension. The old files will not be deleted automatically.

In general, files created or modified by one version of KiCad cannot be opened by older versions of KiCad. For this reason, it is important to keep backup copies of your projects when testing a new KiCad release, until you are confident that you will not need to use the older KiCad version anymore.

The KiCad project manager window is composed of a tree view on the left showing the files associated with the open project, and a launcher on the right containing shortcuts to the various editors and tools.

The tree view shows a list of files inside the project folder. Double-clicking on a file in the tree view will open it in the associated editor. Right-clicking on a file will open a context menu with some file manipulation commands.

The toolbar on the left side of the window provides shortcuts for common project operations:

Most KiCad designs start with the creation of a project. There are two ways to create a project from the KiCad project manager: you may create an empty project, or create a project based on an existing template. This section will cover the creation of a new, empty project. Creating projects from templates is covered in the Project Templates section.

To create a new project, use the New Project…​ command in the File menu, click the New Project button in the top toolbar, or use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+N by default).

You will be prompted for a name to give your project. By default, a directory will be created for your project with the same name. For example, if you enter the name MyProject, KiCad will create the directory MyProject and the project file MyProject/MyProject.kicad_pro inside it.

If you already have a directory to store your project files in, you can uncheck the Create a new directory for the project checkbox in the New Project dialog.

Once you select the name of your project, KiCad will create the following files inside the project directory:

KiCad is able to import files created by some other software packages. Currently the following types of project are supported:

To import a project from one of these tools, choose the appropriate option from the Import Non-KiCad Project submenu of the File menu.

You will be prompted to select either a schematic or a board file in the import file browser dialog. The imported schematic and board files should have the same base file name (e.g. project.sch and project.brd). Once the requested files are selected, you will be asked to select a directory to store the resulting KiCad project.

Accelerated graphics antialising: KiCad can use different methods to prevent aliasing (jagged lines) when rendering using a graphics card. Different methods may look better on different hardware, so you may want to experiment to find the one that looks best to you.

Fallback graphics antialiasing: KiCad can also apply antialiasing when using the fallback graphics mode. Enabling this feature may result in poor performance on some hardware.

Text editor: Choose a text editor to use when opening text files from the project tree view.

PDF viewer: Choose a program to use when opening PDF files.

Show icons in menus: Enables icons in drop-down menus throughout the KiCad user interface.

Icon theme: Sets whether to use the icon theme designed for light window backgrounds or dark window backgrounds. The default setting of Automatic will choose the theme based on the lightness of the operating system window theme.

Icon scale: Sets the size of the icons used in menus and buttons throughout KiCad. Choose Automatic to pick an appropriate icon scale automatically based on your operating system settings.

Canvas scale: Sets the scale of the drawing canvas used in the KiCad editors. Choose Automatic to pick an appropriate canvas scale automatically based on your operating system settings.

Apply icon scaling to fonts: This setting will scale fonts used in the UI according to the icon scale setting. This is not needed for most users, but may improve the look of KiCad on certain Linux platforms when using a high-DPI display.

Warp mouse to origin of moved object: When enabled, the mouse cursor will be repositioned (warped) to the origin of an object when you start a move command on that object.

First hotkey selects tool: When disabled, pressing the hotkey for a command such as Add Wire will immediately start the command at the current cursor location. When enabled, pressing the hotkey the first time will just select the Add Wire tool but will not immediately begin a wire.

Remember open files for next project launch: When enabled, KiCad will automatically re-open any files that were previously open when a project is re-opened.

Auto save: When editing schematics and board files, KiCad can automatically save your work periodically. Set to 0 to disable this feature.

File history size: Configure the number of entries in the list of recently-opened files

3D cache file duration: KiCad creates a cache of 3D models in order to speed up the 3D viewer. You can configure how long to keep this cache before deleting old files.

Automatically backup projects: When enabled, KiCad projects will be archived to ZIP files automatically according to the settings below. The archives will be stored in a subfolder of the project folder. Backups are created when saving files in the project.

Create backups when auto save occurs: When enabled, a backup will be created every time an automatic file save occurs (if the backup is permitted by the settings below). This setting has no effect if the auto save interval is set to 0 (disabled).

Maximum backups to keep: When creating a new backup, the oldest backup file will be deleted to keep the total number of backup files below this limit.

Maximum backups per day: When creating a new backup, the oldest backup file created on the current day will be deleted to stay below this limit.

Minimum time between backups: If backup is triggered (for example, by saving a board file), the backup will not be created if an existing backup file is newer than this limit.

Maximum total backup size: When creating a new backup file, the oldest backup files will be deleted to keep the total size of the backup files directory below this limit.

Remember open files for next project launch: When checked, KiCad will re-open the schematic and board editor if they were open the last time you closed the project manager.

Center and warp cursor on zoom: When enabled, zooming using the hotkeys or mouse wheel will cause the view to be centered on the cursor location.

Use zoom acceleration: When enabled, scrolling the mouse wheel or touchpad faster will cause the zoom to change faster.

Zoom speed: Controls how much the zoom changes for a given amount of scrolling the mouse wheel or touchpad. Use Automatic to set a default value depending on your operating system.

Automatically pan while moving object: When enabled, the view can be panned while moving an object by moving close to the edge of the canvas.

Auto pan speed: Controls how fast the canvas pans while moving an object.

Mouse buttons: You can set the behavior of dragging the middle and right mouse buttons to zoom the view, pan the view, or have no effect. You can also set the behavior of dragging the left mouse button depending on whether or not any objects are already selected in the editing canvas.

Mouse wheel and touchpad scrolling: You can set the behavior of scrolling the mouse wheel or vertical motion of the touchpad while pressing certain modifier keys.

Pan left/right with horizontal movement: When enabled, you can pan the view using the touchpad or horizontal scroll wheel (if present on your mouse).

You can use this dialog to customize the hotkeys used to control KiCad. The hotkeys in the Common section are shared between every KiCad program. Hotkeys for each specific KiCad program are shown when that program is running. You can assign the same hotkey to a different action in different KiCad programs (for example, the schematic editor and the board editor), but you cannot assign a hotkey to more than one action in the same program.

There are many available commands, and so not all of them have a hotkey assigned by default. You can add a hotkey to any command by double-clicking on the command in the list. If you choose a hotkey that is already assigned to a different command, you can choose to use that hotkey on your chosen command, which will remove the hotkey assignment from the conflicting command.

Changes that you have made to hotkey assignments are shown with a * character at the end of the command name. You can undo changes to a specific command by right-clicking that command and selecting Undo Changes, or you can undo all changes with the button below the command list.

Importing hotkeys

Hotkey preferences are stored in .hotkeys files in the KiCad settings directory (see the Settings section for information about where the settings directory is on your operating system). If you have configured KiCad hotkeys the way you like on one computer, you can transfer that configuration to another computer by importing the appropriate .hotkeys file(s).

In KiCad, one can define paths using an environment variable. A few environment variables are internally defined by KiCad, and can be used to define paths for libraries, 3D shapes, etc.

This is useful when absolute paths are not known or are subject to change (e.g. when you transfer a project to a different computer), and also when one base path is shared by many similar items. Consider the following which may be installed in varying locations:

For instance, the path to the connect.pretty footprint library, when using the KICAD6_FOOTPRINT_DIR environment variable, would be defined as ${KICAD6_FOOTPRINT_DIR}/connect.pretty.

The Preferences → Configure Paths…​ menu allows you to define paths for some built-in KiCad environment variables, and add your own environment variables to define personal paths, if needed.

KiCad environment variables:

Paths set in the Configure Paths dialog are internal to KiCad and are not visible as environment variables outside of KiCad. They are stored in KiCad’s user configuration files.

Paths can also be set as environment variables outside of KiCad, which will override any settings in the user’s configuration.

Note also that the environment variable KIPRJMOD is always internally defined by KiCad, and expands to the current project absolute path.

For instance, ${KIPRJMOD}/connect.pretty is always the connect.pretty folder (the footprint library) inside the current project folder.

The KIPRJMOD variable cannot be changed in the Configure Paths dialog or overridden by an external environment variable.

The Preferences → Manage Symbol Libraries…​ menu lets you manage the list of symbol libraries (symbol library table).

Likewise, use the Preferences → Manage Footprint Libraries…​ menu to manage the list of footprint libraries (footprint library table).

For each type of library (symbol and footprint), there are 2 library tables: global and project specific. The global library table is located in the user configuration directory and contains a list of libraries available to all projects. The project-specific library table is optional and contains a list of libraries specific to the project. It is located in the project directory.

The File → New Project → New Project from Template menu will open the Project Template Selector dialog:

A single click on a template’s icon will display the template information, and a further click on the OK button creates the new project. The template files will be copied to the new project location and renamed to reflect the new project’s name.

After selection of a template:

KiCad looks for template files in the following paths:

The template name is the directory name where the template files are stored. The metadata directory is a subdirectory named meta containing files describing the template.

The metadata consists of one required file, and may contain optional files. All files must be created by the user using a text editor or previous KiCad project files, and placed into the required directory structure.

All files and directories in a template are copied to the new project path when a project is created using a template, except meta. Files and directories containing the template name will be renamed with the new project file name.

For example, creating a project called newproject from a template named example:

A template does not need to contain a complete project, if a required project file is missing, KiCad will create it using its default create project behavior:

As an exception to the template name renaming rule, if one project file (.kicad_pro) exists and its name doesn’t match the template name, KiCad will do the renaming based on that project file name instead:

The actions below are available in the KiCad Project Manager. Hotkeys can be assigned to any of these actions in the Hotkeys section of the preferences.