Create one library link for many components

I will give you what assistance I can, but first your post compels me to speak like a parent - which I am. I’m somewhat out of practice, since my “baby” must be nearly a decade older than you. However, he IS in college - scheduled to defend a doctoral dissertation in a couple of weeks - so I’m not entirely unacquainted with the hardships faced by students. For that matter, I’m not personally as far removed from the college classroom as you might think: I was over 40 when I returned to school.

When do you need this board completed? Did you notice that you are responding to a thread that has been inactive for over two years? If you are truly so inexperienced with circuit board layout that creating a schematic symbol is a major task, then I doubt that you have enough time to create an effective layout. Perhaps your time is better spent giving your instructor’s car a good wash and wax.

Similar requests appear on this Forum a time or two each month. The general consensus was summarized by @Joan_Sparky about six months ago, in the thread at " Libraries very limited? - #2 by PCB_Wiz ":

In fact, I suspect your situation is significantly easier that that. I invested 5 minutes into satisfying your request, and discovered that “Picaxe” is simply a family of Microchip’s PIC microcontrollers, with a pre-programmed bootloader pushed into a secure partition of the codespace. The Picaxe uC’s come in standard DIP packages, so the footprint part of the library work is already done!

(Did I get that right? I am unlikely to live long enough to discover and correct all my mistakes on my own, so please point out any errors I make.)

OK, so maybe I oversimplified the footprint situation. As @Joan_Sparky wrote, most of us are not totally pleased with the “stock” KiCAD footprints for various reasons. We almost always adjust or supplement them to satisfy local requirements or personal preferences; at the very least we carefully audit them against manufacturers’ data sheets. Even if you are the pickiest layout designer (or is that " PIC-Ki-est "?), the footprint creation task is 80% - 90% complete for you.

Now for schematic symbols. As I mentioned, PICaxe is a Microchip PIC microcontroller. KiCAD appears to have a fairly extensive collection of symbols for Microchip’s parts. If you installed local libraries, you’ll find them at {KiCAD_Installation_Directory}\share\kicad\library . Look for library titles that include “microchip”. Open KiCAD’s Symbol Editor, and find a standard PIC part that seems to be the basis for your PICAxe part. (At least get the number of pins correct.) Save the symbol with a new name - perhaps in a new library. Then you can change the pin names to whatever nomenclature PICAxe uses. I estimate this would take about 30 minutes, for a microcontroller with a pin-count you can handle in a college project.

Of course, you can take a little time to impress your instructor and make your future tasks a little easier by re-arranging the pins and customizing the symbol. Most uC pins have three or four (or five or six or seven . . . ) possible functions, configurable in the firmware. It’s not necessary to list ALL of them on the schematic symbol - only the ones that actually apply to your application. For example, it’s not necessary to show that a pin COULD BE a PWM output, or an A/D input, if you will only use it as a General I/O. I believe that leaving off those unused function designators makes the schematic more readable, and makes your design intent more obvious to those who see the diagram in the future (including yourself). I have not yet done a microcontroller project in KiCAD, but in prior incarnations I always created custom symbols when my projects used uC’s.

In this Forum (and others serving similar communities), “initiative” is an admirable trait. Posts that sound like, “Gimme what I need because I can’t be bothered with learning it myself.” get ignored if the poster is fortunate. Posts that say, “I tried to do {something}. Here’s the {file/screenshot/squawk} that resulted. I can tell I’m not even dressed for the game, much less in the right ballpark. What’s the first step I should take to get on the right road?” will sometimes get more assistance - useful, detailed assistance - than you can handle!

Dale

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