Change selected components footprint

Schematic
1

The footprint of a single component can be changed easily in the schematic by hitting ‘F’ (“Edit Footprint”).
This doesn’t work if more than one component is selected.

Is there a technical reason for this limitation?

“Edit Symbol Fields” is no alternative, since it shows all components, not only the selected.

The best workaround I found so far is to keep the pcb open to get the selection also there and invoke “Change Footprints” there.

Especially for MLCCs in power circuits, I select the footprints in a late stage of the schematic development, when I checked the required size to get the capacitance at the operating voltage.

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2

You can do it from the Symbol Fields Table in the schematic editor then use F8 to update the PCB … does that do what you need?

3

if I understand correctly, using the symbol fields table has at least these two drawbacks:

  • it doesn’t use the footprint selector with filter etc. so I need to know/copy the exact footprint name before I set it
  • it doesn’t allow to change only components currently selected. Selecting by name is much less intuitive than by clicking the components in the schematic.

It would be much simpler, if ‘F’ could change more than one component.

4

Both drawbacks for the symbol field table are correctly identified. Regarding the second there is a open gitlab issue: Wish: enable more eeschema --> Tools to work with a selection (#9008) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
But this stems from a older kicad-v6. For the current symbol fields table it will probably not work to respect the existing selection, as every action on the symbol fields table itself changes the current selection.

It would be much simpler, if ‘F’ could change more than one component.

Either that or the footprint field could be displayed (and edited) on the left side properties panel.
Both ideas would need a gitlab issue to present them to the developers.

5

Not sure this is correct . . .

image

6

I guess (the opening post from Vero is not 100% explicit) the missing filter refers to the later opened footprint chooser.

If you open the FP chooser with the “F”-command (or from the symbol properties dialog) you get two checkboxes to help filter the footprints. These checkboxes are missing if you open the FP chooser from the symbol fields table.

I had reported this once, but it was not completely corrected. If I recall the reason was that you could group symbols in the symbol fields table. These grouped symbols could have different pins/filters - so the algorithm had to guess the right filter strings. Instead of guessing the checkboxes were removed.

fp_chooser
fp_chooser3836×1039 473 KB

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7

I will do so (for the ‘F’-approach) in a few days - need to finish work first.

Thanks to everyone who helped me make sure I didn’t overlook a simple solution.

8

Done: eeschema "Edit Footprint" should work on selection of multiple parts (#19263) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

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9

Besides the field to assign a footprint (‘F’) of a selected symbol there are other fields (Text size, Position X, etc)

image

If I modify any of these fields, where are these changes reflected? It would have to be in the PCB or in the schematic?

Anyway, the fact is I am not able to see these changes anywhere (for example, changing the X, Y position). Could anybody confirm this? I’m using the latest version:

Application: KiCad Schematic Editor x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 8.0.7-8.0.7-0~ubuntu22.04.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.2.1
	FreeType 2.11.1
	HarfBuzz 2.7.4
	FontConfig 2.13.1
	libcurl/7.81.0 OpenSSL/3.0.2 zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.9 zstd/1.4.8 libidn2/2.3.2 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.3.2) libssh/0.9.6/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.43.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.5.18

Platform: Linux Mint 21.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, cinnamon, x11
OpenGL: Intel, Mesa Intel(R) HD Graphics 4400 (HSW GT2), 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2

Build Info:
	Date: Dec  3 2024 15:56:08
	wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.74.0
	OCC: 7.6.3
	Curl: 7.81.0
	ngspice: 43
	Compiler: GCC 11.4.0 with C++ ABI 1016
10

If I modify any of these fields, where are these changes reflected? It would have to be in the PCB or in the schematic?

These changes affect the display of the footprint string in the schematic. In your case you will see no change on your schematic because the checkbox “Visible” is turned off.

If you turn on the “Visible” checkbox the footprint name is displayed along the symbol graphic and all the parameters affect the visual appearance of the string.

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11

Okay, thank you! I was confused about these fields. So thinking carefully is it easy to understand that changing a group of symbols in order to modify their footprints using the ‘F’ option as Vero suggested is not feasible. Personally, I have never used this option. I have always done it using the Symbol Properties or the Symbol Fields Table as RaptorUK said.

12

do you mind to explain why this it is not feasible?

BTW: There is a workaround: Mark the components in the schematic while the PCB is also open, switch to PCB (the components are selected there), change the footprints in the PCB (it is possible in the PCB), back-annotate.

13

Using the current Edit Footprint Field modal dialog is not feasible. Besides the Footprint field (that you could modify for a group of symbols if possible) there are others dedicated fields related to the ‘one’ selected symbol (think about Position X,Y fields for example). How could you change the position field for a selected group of symbols?

For me it is easier to change multiple symbol footprints in the Symbol Fields Table.