Directly opening symbols/footprints in their respctive editors

[elekgeek]

Hi,

Is there a way to directly load a symbol/footprint in their respective editor without having to add them to an existing library?

thanks

[paulvdh]

There is: Footprint Editor / File / Import / Footprint which opens a file browser and I could just browse to some random footprint and import it.

There is also Schematic Symbol Editor / File / Import Symbol but it has some other logic behind it which I do not quite understand.

Rene once wrote that he used a special project for the library management, and that project probably had included all possible libraries present on his system.

[BlackCoffee]

Not exactly what you’re looking for but, this avoids needing a Folder/Footprint in Kicad’s Path (meaning, you can get it from anywhere on your machine)…

To load a Footprint not included in the library (or other location defined in the Kicad Paths), do this:

Start the Footprint Editor,
Menubar|File> Import Footprint

Screenshot

[elekgeek]

Why the user has to select a writable library, then use import function, this should not be necessary for opening a symbol/footprint file to view it.

[elekgeek]

Maybe we could draw attention of @JeffYoung and @craftyjon.

[JeffYoung]

No reason really; just no one has had time to improve that workflow.