Hi. I am new to the Kicad software I had deleted it months ago and just download it back. I was trying to desing an FM transmiter using a circuit I found online. I have made the schematic but when I go ahead to assign footprints I do not see any for the NPN transistors.
Is there a place I can find those? How could I add them to my library footprints?. I have seen some recent kicad projects YouTube videos and their footprint libraries show different names, mine does not seem to have to much things.
Many tutorial texts and videos were developed for earlier versions of KiCAD. There have been HUGE changes to KiCAD over the last 3 years or so! Therefore a lot of tutorial material is out-of-date regarding things like the user interface, menus, etc - even though the basic concepts are still valid. In particular, the libraries received a major overhaul for Version 5.
Which version of KiCAD are you running? The easy way to answer that question is to start KiCAD, then select “Help” > “About” > “Copy Version Info” as shown in the atch screenshot. Then, cut and paste the displayed information into a post here on the Forum:
The standard KiCAD libraries are quite extensive. You must, of course, add libraries to the Footprint Library Table before you can use them in a project. Consult the " FAQ " section of this Forum if you need a refresher on how to do that. (Hey, some of us need to be retrained after a lunch break, much less months away from the program.)
Which specific transistor type, or which package style, do you need the footprint for?
A footprint does not care what the function of the component is. It cares about defining the geometrical dimensions of the interface between the PCB and the component (the land pattern)
The symbol is what cares about the fact that this is a npn transistor.
If you didn’t clear the old installation completely your new installation can show you the footprint library list you had those time. May be you shorted that list those time. Or may be your list references libraries from V4 and those loaded with V5 you don’t see.
Thank you. I found that part now. it is just that mine does not shows just the single name (TO-92L) that way. but a really long description like Package_TO_SOT_THT: 92L.
I thought they had easier names to find related to what I wanted and was confused because when I selected the component to filter a footprint for it, it does not do it but actually shows me all the footprints in the filter footprint part to the right, instead of showing me few for the component I am using.
