KiCad 7 feature collection

[mvnmgrx]

A collection of new stuff KiCad 7 seems to implement that may be important in the future.

April developer update:

• Symbol: New pin types, such as Unit, Orientation, etc
• Board: Inverse text objects

February developer update:

• DRC: Mechanical clearance rules: Two new constraints (mechanical_clearance and mechanical_hole_clearance)
• DRC: Custom rule severities (new severity token added!)
• DRC: Pad to zone rules (thermal_relief_gap, thermal_spoke_width and zone_connection)
• Dimension: Radial dimension tool
• Schematic: Rectangle and circle primitives added
• Schematic: Custom fonts in development
• Schematic: Text boxes added

December developer update

• Do not populate field
• Simulation model editor

New things in the KiCad developer reference:

• Symbols now have a project and instance token: https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/sexpr-schematic/#_symbol_section
• HierarchicalSheets now have an instances token: https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/sexpr-schematic/#_hierarchical_sheet_section
• Images now have a layer token: https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/sexpr-intro/index.html#_images

[hlprasu]

The stroke definition seems to have made the color property to be optional in the KiCad 7.0.0. Unfortunately this is undocumented but visible in generated .kicad_sym files.

Specifically, in https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/sexpr-intro/index.html#_symbols, the stroke definition given is

  (stroke
    (width WIDTH)                                               
    (type TYPE)                                                 
    (color R G B A)                                             
  )

This is valid for KiCad 6.0. But, in KiCad 7.0 it seems to be

  (stroke
    (width WIDTH)                                               
    (type TYPE)                                                 
    [(color R G B A)]
  )

where color property is made optional for a stroke. This needs to be revalidated with KiCad team. I've raised an issue in KiCad dev docs gitlab repo - https://gitlab.com/kicad/services/kicad-dev-docs/-/issues/23

[hlprasu]

diff --git a/src/kiutils/items/common.py b/src/kiutils/items/common.py
index bca15f8..5384ed9 100644
--- a/src/kiutils/items/common.py
+++ b/src/kiutils/items/common.py
@@ -233,7 +233,7 @@ class Stroke():
         Returns:
             - Stroke: Object of the class initialized with the given S-Expression
         """
-        if not isinstance(exp, list) or len(exp) != 4:
+        if not isinstance(exp, list) or len(exp) < 3:
             raise Exception("Expression does not have the correct type")
 
         if exp[0] != 'stroke':
@@ -246,6 +246,9 @@ class Stroke():
             if item[0] == 'width': object.width = item[1]
             if item[0] == 'type':  object.type = item[1]
             if item[0] == 'color': object.color = ColorRGBA.from_sexpr(item)
+        
+        if len(exp) == 3:
+            object.color = ColorRGBA() # 0, 0, 0, 0 -- default
         return object
 
     def to_sexpr(self, indent=2, newline=True) -> str:

I did the above change in code which fixed it. Does this seem ok?

[mvnmgrx]

Closed in preparation of next release.