Looking for some clarification or learn if others see the same thing. I use a lot of radial style capacitors in my designs. I’ve seemed to land on the “Capacitor_THT:CP_Radial_D5.0mm_P2.50mm” as my most used footprint for electrolytic caps because this seems to be the most standard available size when I go to purchase caps of a wide variety of capacitance and voltage ratings.
But, I find that these caps in the 3D viewer look really short. Does anyone know how to fix this or view in a different way? This isn’t a priority task so not looking to make too many specific library mods if not needed, but curious if others find the same thing? They show up looking shorter than the BJT transistors and opamps. Most of the caps i use I think are closer to 12.5mm which is taller than opamps with sockets and transistors.
Unfortunately you will need to get/make/modify and associate a different 3D model with the footprint. There is no indication of the height in the footprint name.
When KiCad started to gain traction, on-the-fly model generation was expensive. Lately there have been wishes for parametric model generation, things like colour for LEDs, markings for components, and so forth. Perhaps it’s worth thinking about again. Not a must have just a nice to have.
You can also use Z scale on the model to match the height of your capacitors. Note that you have to change the 3D model extension to .step explicitly in footprint properties in that case.
3D models for KiCad’s radial capacitors are generated by a script. This makes it quite easy to make capacitors of other sizes. You can find the script on:
In addition to Z-Scaling the Kicad included STEP Files, These are my Baseline/Default Cap STEP files. All Black but, you can change the Color in most CAD programs. I wrote an App to do it (App and STEP Files Posted here)
Additional Info here that may help if using Linux/Windows…
