madparts release 1.2

It's been a few months, but finally the new madparts 1.2 release is available!

Madparts is a functional electronics footprint editor with support for the Kicad and Eagle electronics Cad programs.

screenshot of madparts 1.2 running on linux/xmonad

Highlights

 KiCad support

Finally full support for importing and exporting footprints from/to KiCad is now available. madparts supports both the old .mod file format and the newer .pretty/.kicad_mod file format.

More shapes

1.2 adds support for arcs, partial circles, polygons and holes.

QtScriptEngine

Alex Schultz contributed javascript handling with QtScriptEngine instead of PyV8. This means there is one less dependency for the program making it easier to install, package and maintain. It is also faster! Thanks again Alex!

More documentation

Documentation is still sparse, but there is some more description of the supported features and code structures. Be sure to also have a look at my own private github repo of madparts footprints for more code examples.

Conclusion

If you want to give it a try, head to the website at http://madparts.org/ for more information and downloads. If you find issues or have questions, don't hesitate to email me.

The future

For madparts 1.3 a few changes are planned:

• switch to SVG based graphics rendering to get rid of the dependency on modern openGL 2.1, making the program also usable on older computers
• more documentation
• better error handling