I don’t seem to find any dip socket footprints - am I missing something?
If you are not looking for ZIF sockets, what is the difference between footprint for normal DIP housing and DIP socket?
Thanks, that is what I was looking for. I have never heard of them called that 
ZIF sockets are the sockets with a locking lever on the side. They are quite a bit larger than a fixed IC socket, so the pads would be in the same place and larger silkscreen and fab boxes
3D model could be easy replaced for particular component on the PCB. For the routing it won’t be necessary.
The pins and pads are the same. Allow that the part dimensions are bigger, or you will collide with other parts around it.
This one on Wikipedia is typical https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Textoolfassung_28_(smial).jpg/220px-Textoolfassung_28_(smial).jpg
This is absolutely preposterous. It really makes KiCAD look like a mess. I’ve been looking for over an hour and I still can’t find a simple 8 pin dip socket footprint. Even google can’t find it. You guys are 20 years into KiCAD and it’s still without basic, simple, straightforward things like 8 pin dip sockets that are instantly stupid-simple to find. Un believable.
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This thread comes up as the only reasonable thing when googling for +kicad +“8 pin dip socket” — so I added my complaint here. I realize it’s different.
It’s April 2017 and I just grabbed the “nightly build” for windows (Version: (2017-04-11 revision 57ded5823)-makepkg, release build) and installed it over top of the 4.0.6 stable release. This nightly build has a search box in the CVPCB tool under EESCHEMA – and if you type “DIP-8” the sensible thing shows up.
The 8 pin DIP socket is hidden in the footprint file named Housings_DIP.
I sure hope CERN and the growing interest / growing number of developers can really improve KiCAD, because it seems Autodesk is going to drive EAGLE into the ground with its subscription fees and greater interconnection.
Unfortunately, the commenters all have a valid point from their point of view.
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DIP sockets should probably have a diffferent Keep-Out on that “footprint”; even though the pad dimensions should be the same as the part “footprint”.
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It really is sorta silly that there is no DIP socket footprint with a 3D view of the socket populated with the DIP chip itself.
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Who at KiCad thought it was a good idea to name the folder “Housings…”? I’ve NEVER seen a DataSheet use a different name then “package”. Changing “Housings” to “Packages” would probably solve quite a bit of frustration for new users; I know it affected me and a few others as the listing is a bit confusing.
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There IS in fact a SMD_Packages library, but NO TH_Packages library. This is exactly bassackwards from the #3 format above, where the device technology is listed last; certainly this is confusing to new users.
Unless this is all going to be seen as “fixed” in the next version, I can understand the complaints in this thread.
ON EDIT: It seems to make sense to spend manpower on new features to make it more productive. However, with the timing of the Eagle shift, it could be more productive now to make things more intuitive for beginners. Not everyone is both a coder and a draftsman… and an electrical engineer… and an electronics technician to tell the electrical engineer to tell the mechanical engineer to NOT do it that was because it makes it much harder to repair…
Sum up, might win some newer members that are coders to help make all of this happen with more manpower.
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So many different sockets though, turned pin are slightly wider than wiping contact and there are the ZIF socket with levers. All different courtyards and 3D views
I don’t disagree; but would it not make sense to include the basic DIP packages from 4 to 28 pin count?
ON EDIT: The ones that a person could, in the past, easily purchase off the shelf at Radio-Shack?
Well feel free to make them and create a pull request 
(Your first draft looks nice, but i would remove the text. Do you have a step model for it?)
@SchrodingersGat, @jkriege2 should we create an empty .pretty repo for such footprints?
Just a tip if you really want to do it: Use scripts to generate the footprints and 3d models. 3d models should go into the new library as well. (only if you have a step model!)
The library maintainers. Changing library names creates problems for users. (I’m not sure this is a good idea.)
This is a legacy repo. (With lots of different stuff in it.) The correct footprints are now in Housings_bga.pretty, housings_soic.pretty, capacitors_smd.pretty, …
There are DIP ICs in socket 3D models here:
http://smisioto.no-ip.org/elettronica/kicad/kicad-en.htm
Search for “PTH ICs” on the page
The most likely DIP-8 socket that one would expect a newcomer to know.
I actually used Google to translate “package” in several languages. It certainly could be possible that “package” means “housing” in some language, but certainly NOT most of them. I tried French, German, Latin, Chinese, and several others for fun; Google is pretty amazing in being able to “speak” these languages.
So, which country is the term “Housing” used instead of “Package”; now you have me curious.
Yes, but I was under the impression that re-fining the libraries was to be timed to sync with the next version of KiCad. If I was wrong about this, thanks for the clarification.
Your post seems a little combative. I hold no ill will towards anyone regarding this topic. In the past I held a class at a maker space and showed the members an intro demo of KiCad. As with the posters in this thread, the small quirks in the library wording were not intuitive to them; as well as to me. My single point was that small changes could be more intuitive to a larger set of groups of people; nothing more.
I even pointed out that KiCad DID/DOES use the term “package” and choosing to use only ONE would go a long ways to reducing the confusion. I don’t really care which one gets picked, but pick one, and it will likely make it more intuitive for every user.
This is starting to become sorta funny on my end. From my point of view, this is a DISCUSSION forum. A place to discuss topics related to KiCad.
This is at least the second time where I have made comments about my initial ideas on how to make better experience ends up with being told to “Do it yourself”.
It is like as if I went into a steak house and posted a review of my opinion of the experience. The result was then being told by the restaurant to go into the kitchen to cook it myself.
In my opinion KiCad is a fantastic EDA tool. That is why I recommended it to everyone at the Maker Space. That doesn’t mean that it is “intuitive” for most beginners.
I did not have to spend my time to try out “Test Nightlies” that broke my install. I did not have to spend my time to try to help KiCad users by creating a detailed post here on how to successfully create a NPTH. At some point in the future I may have the spare time to “Do it yourself” for some of these things. That time is not now.
It’s more a thing of ‘be the change you want to see (in the world)’.
Most of the people posting and helping here know their way around KiCAD, but are not so deeply involved that they are coding for/on KiCAD due to whatever reasons - alone posting help here is a lot already. So telling ‘them’ what you want or think should be done is rather pointless, as they’re definitely the wrong audience.
If you really want your voice be heard take it up with the developers on the bugtracker, but those dudes have even some thicker skin than us and no qualms showing that to anyone proposing something.
The only way to succeed there is either convincing them of your proposal (very faint chance) or doing it yourself, which again, is what we have been telling you all along.
Sorry.
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This is another one of those examples where people frame KiCad as a commercial product, when it is not, so that example is invalid in all respects.
I can’t think of an exact analogy. But it is more like going to a charity soup kitchen who give out free soup, and asking them to cook a special soup for you because you don’t like the ones the are giving out.
Or perhaps, there is a volunteer project, where people are building swings for kids. You tell them that you won’t be helping, but they should also build a climbing frame.
Or you hang Christmas decorations outside your house, and your neighbour (who doesn’t bother with any decorations), says “that’s great, can you do that at Easter as well please? I won’t help at all, because I have other things to do”.
The point is, people who create KiCad are volunteers. Their motivations are completely different than to increase “sales”. In particular, when it comes to asking other people to essentially work for you for free, that needs to be approached with care. In the context of an Open Source project, which is essentially a community volunteer project, it is actually not an unreasonable thing to say “if you think that is such a great idea, then do it”.
Commenting on technical aspects is ok to a point, but no one wants to be the guy who always seems to be asking for more free stuff but never contributes to the voluntary effort.
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Well the forum is a good place to start a discussion. (Maybe not the place where the developers or library maintainers will “hear” you.)
Of course there are problems in kicad but i don’t think library names are the most pressing issue.
Over the last few month the “kicad library convention” (KLC) got a major overhaul inspired by a topic on this forum requesting a more IPC compatible footprint library. We are currently already thinking about the next version of the KLC.
So if you want to help make the library better:
Have a look at the current KLC and the associated FAQ.
If you understand both of them, chime in to the discussion for KLC 2.1 and make your voice heard. But please keep it civil in there and remember that nothing will change over night.
You might find that a lot of stuff can be done better. But some stuff has a higher priority than other things. (Currently the main priority has been to better describe the KLC to beginners and to get it nearer to being ipc compliant.)
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Back when PCBs were taped out on lightboxes by chain smoking contractors, I never heard “decal” but did hear the word “transfer”. Decal is an US English term and this language split is part of the problem here