Component labels not showing in pcbnew, appear in 3D

[Ladasky]

Hello everyone,

I’m using KiCad version 4.0.6+dfsg1-1 on Ubuntu 17.10.

I have designed several two-layer boards. I am picking up an unfinished design from another user who only completed the schematic. The board layout needs to be 4 layers with all components on the front side. In pcbnew, I selected that option in Layers Setup. When I imported the netlist, I didn’t see any silkscreen layer component labels associated with the footprints the way that I’m used to. However, the labels do show up in the 3D render! Because I can’t see the label in the layout, I have components on top of labels everywhere. It’s messy and unreadable.

Here’s another strange thing. If I select a board layout with 4 layers and components on both sides, then I flip the component, I can get the label to display, and I can click that label as I normally do. But when I flip the component back to the front side of the board, the label disappears again. The pcbnew checklist says that it should be displaying F.SilkS.

It’s very hard to edit the positions of the labels in this layout. I have never had this particular problem before. I hope that someone can provide me with some advice. Thanks!

[Rene_Poschl]

Could you make a few screenshots of pcb_new to give us an idea what is going on?

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I assume with label you mean the reference designator.

There are two (global) ways to control its visibility. You can control the visibility of the silkscreen layers (F.SilkS and B.SilkS) And you can control references alone in the render tab.
As flipping shows the reference i would guess you have either F.SilkS or B.SilkS deselected in the layers tab.

[hermit]

@Ladasky

I’m using KiCad version 4.0.6+dfsg1-1 on Ubuntu 17.10.

I’m not sure exactly how Ubuntu works but you can upgrade to the latest version in Debian using backports.

Or try this:

Install on Ubuntu

[Ladasky]

Thank you Rene, “Text Front” was deselected in the Render tab. I didn’t realize that the selections in the Render tab and the Layer tab interacted in this way.