I’ve been having some issues with the bitmap to component (B2C hence) function lately. I’ve been meaning to import a photo to use as a graphic in the silk screen layer, but have had some problems.
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B2C has a tendency to crash
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The generated footprints leads to an error message when pressing O in pcbnew, and the folder, userlibs.pretty, (the name of the folder for my home-made footprints) is no longer usable. I can see the library/folder, but it’s empty. Meaning, not just the photo-footprint in question, but all footprints in the folder are invisible. Somehow the error in the footprint from the photo makes the whole folder impossible to read for kicad.
I haven’t saved the error message, I’ll see if I can create it again. Basically it said something along the lines “expected ----” like when I miss out a ) while programming. Removing said footprints is (was) the only way to not have the error message and to be able to use any of my other footprints - big issue.
Somehow, just retrying several times made me succeed in creating a usable footprint.
- Trying again today, with another photo (I decided against the first one, and it used the user eco 1 layer, not silkscreen (though I’ve changed the layer manually using a text editor before), I had even more problems. Possibly because the photo was a bit more detailed. It’s an iphone 8 photo, so around 16 megapixels or whatever, greyscale. (saving the file as JPEG/BMP/monochrome BMP makes no difference for these issues)
B2C was very slow, and crashed more than before. I gave up, and removed the offending footprints from userlibs. The folder was still empty! The newest footprint in the folder is about a month old (and used in my current project: loads fine, I can go and edit it from pcbnew, E -> edit footprint). Multiple restarts of Kicad, and checking for any hidden kicad-processes in Task Manager didn’t help. I ended up renaming the library (userlibs2.pretty) and adding that, which worked just fine. But that’s not a great solution since lots of projects refer to the userlibs.pretty-library, and I sync it (manually, a bit of a luddite) between three computers.
I will now try changing the name back to plain userlibs (and restarting kicad)… Nope, userlibs.pretty is still invisible, userlibs2.pretty is still visible when I try to place or edit footprints. … But the footprints are not possible to place in the pcb, instead placing them opens the Choose Footprints dialog. Changing back … yes, works as normal now. Kicad hates my old library!
Next step, opening Footprint Library Manager and removing both userlibs.pretty and userlibs2.pretty, renaming userlibs2.pretty back to userlibs.pretty … Ok, working as normal now.
This is pretty strange. The “broken” footprints are all in the recycling bin.
Using Kicad 5.1.9, on windows 7 Ultimate SP1.
I realise I may have missed some info here, and perhaps written too much about some things. Just ask and I’ll take a look 