Ok aim getting a littl more familiar now with kicad ,just battle through placing vias. But I have a pcb. And the components laid out and it looks well in 3D View but… Id like to alter th pads witching the socket strip 1x8 to suit my need, make the pads bigger and the drill holes smaller. The components are all laid out and I’ve left clicked, right clicked the pads to find the options to edit but can’t. If I right click and press ‘edit with footprint editor’ I can edit and do what I want but it won’t let me save as read only.
Any advice places on this?
make your own local fp-lib, and save the edited footprint to that… then load it via cvpcb.
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Hi Joan
Don’t know how I managed to create and save my footprint folder but I did:grin:
the trouble was trying to save it to the correct active library finding the one I’d created, anyway thanks to your ‘point in the right direction’ and loads of effort from my self I can now edit the pads with my pcb. Footprints. BUT I have 32 female headers each having 8 pins or pads. I can alter each header independently but haven’t figured out how to do all 32x8 at once. I know the global pad settings has a ‘change pads on identical footprints’ but it’s not highlighted as an option… Please please can I change the whole 32x8 at once?
Much respect.
BTW. I used the ‘Exchange Footprints’ option whilst right clicking on the footprints in pcbnew. I exchanged the uneditable footprint for the one I’d created and saved.
Do they all originate from the same footprint?
If yes, you only have to do it once for one footprint.
- open one of them in the fp editor
- change one pad how you want it
- r-click on it and select ‘export pad settings’
- r-click on another one and select ‘import pad settings’
- after you got all changed, save the footprint
- close the fp editor or just go back to pcbnew
Now we change all of them in one swoop (make a backup of the project kicad_pcb file now, just in case)
- r-click on the edited footprint
- select ‘edit parameters’
- click ‘change footprint’ button
- select options accordingly, probably the 2nd or 3rd from top for your case
- hit ‘apply’ button
I hope it works, as otherwise you have to replace them, one by one.
Procedure is same as above… get to ‘change footprint’ window for each of the ones that need changing and instead of being able to swap them at once, click on ‘list footprints’, select the one you have modified and click ‘apply’. Repeat as necessary.
Good luck
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Yeah you got it:grin: I’m much happier now.
Many thanks.
My next task to edit the traces…
Tracks…
Tracks are no probs…
Oh no now I can’t ‘print preview’… Im not sure if its due to altering the library and pads but I was able to print preview and print the circuit without issues but now Im unable to…
Talk about two steps forward and three back.
Heeeeelp…please
oh no I fell for it, the printer had uninstalled it’s self so the pcb. prog didnt know where to look, my fault,
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