Could some explain to me on how to use the ‘Circular Array Tool’?
It’s so damn UN-intuitive.
All I want is a circular array 270 degrees with about a 12mm diameter.
This is for polygon line tool, I making line tics for a pot on the front silk layer.
It takes a little practice. Since a picture is worth 1k words… The key thing is to note the required origin, it’s easiest if it is at an offset of 0, 90, 180 deg, otherwise you need to calculate the origin with trig.
Note that you can select a group of objects to duplicate, so you could also include a text, and edit the value afterwards.
Or alternatively, select just the text field, unselect “Rotate”. This duplicates the text field to new positions, but keeps the original orientation.
thanks, It took some practice but I think I got it now.
How ever I’m having problems with text.
When I right click on a text object i don’t get the ‘Create Array’ option.
How do i get the numbers on my ticks like you did?
Same method, select the number, right click on it. Must use OpenGL canvas of course.
Ohh OpenGl Canvas.
That did it, good deal
thanks agian. 
Yea the name of the canvases is not ideal. (The good news is that this will most definitely change soon. It is part of the discussion about the standard canvas: https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg32708.html)
Just for fun, I thought it might be useful to have a footprint wizard. Now it is easier to go up to 11.
dial_indicator_wizard.py (4.6 KB)
I think you should restrict it to 10. Otherwise it’s dangerous because of competition; now everyone can just add one more than the others have. There’s no end to that arms race.
@bobc would you mind sending the plugin to one of the developers so that it can be packaged with future KiCad installations?
Putting it in a github account would allow it to be linked with the other plugins.
Does Kicad have a plugin folder??
Where would I put the py file?
btw thanks bobc
There seems to be an empty repo under the kicad github. (It does however contain a wiki. Just no footprint wizards yet.) I am not certain how official it is. Maybe @SchrodingersGat knows more about it.
Where would I put the .py file??
Depends on where you installed KiCad, but on my system the folder is C:\Programs\KiCad\share\kicad\scripting\plugins. If you installed into C:\Program Files, you probably need admin access to copy the file there.
I copied the file and another wizard I created here https://github.com/bobc/kicad-utils/tree/master/scripts/footprint-wizards
See http://docs.kicad.org/doxygen/md_Documentation_development_pcbnew-plugins.html where you can find some info, the current authoritative source of information is scripting/kicadplugins.i in the kicad source code, https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/tree/scripting/kicadplugins.i.
Ok next question.
How do I run it?
This repo was (is) intended for community contributed scripts, however it has not yet received any attention.
Maybe because it is kind of invisible. Should we link to it from the kicad.org homepage? Or at least pin it to the kicad github page. The same would then apply for the templates repo.
Or should we start a general scripting repo instead? (Maybe the footprint wizard stuff can then be a supdirectory of this larger repo.)
Another part would be scripts that use the pcb_new/footprint editor python api. (Action plugins. Examples would be the stuff that @HiGreg made. )
And maybe even standalone stuff. (the test scripts, footprint generators, …)
Should we talk to the developers about that? (It would make sense that the footprint wizards that are currently supplied with kicad would also reside in this repo.)
it’s nice to see you all having a cordial conversation over the git hub repo, but could someone answer my question?
Well it seems the people who know something about scripting are currently not here.
I can only tell you what google can find. I assume you already tried that.
