Hi, newcomer here.
I’m using kicad 7.0.9 on macos 12.7.2
I’ve managed to find some promising plugins, but I cannot see the external tools anywhere in the menus, and for that reason I’m unable to use them.
Has anyone had this problem before and knows how to fix it? I’ve been banging my head for the past couple of says trying to solve this problem, but to no avail.
I also had a look at the topics in discussion but didn’t manage to find anything useful, maybe I just overlooked it. If you know of any thread that has the answer, can you please kindly point me to it?
In Pcb Editor go to Tools → External plugins
If your plugins don’t show up there then you either installed them incorrectly (if it was a manual installation), they are written for different kicad version or they have bugs.
As an Aid in testing Plugins, Consider making a very basic Plugin that will work…
You can Place copies of:
• “my_TextEdit.py”
• “k_textEdit2.png” (this is the Icon file, if wanted)
Into the ‘Scripting/plugins’ folder. Exit Kicad and Restart Kicad. The plugin should appear in the PCB after running the PCB editor.
Your system may have different location of the Scripting/Plugins folder… your homework is to find it.
In the my_TextEdit.py code, You’ll need to change the location of your TextEditor if for some reason the file system has the Mac’s TextEdit.app somewhere else. Use the TextEditor (in utf-8 font) or programming IDE to edit file if needed
(FYI - done on Mac Monterey 12.7.2 )
This Archive file contains the Plugin and Icon Archive.zip (6.2 KB)
Thank you for your reply. What I’m in desperate need is to get the Import Lib plug in working. Adding components by hand is a real pain, and distracts from keeping the train thought and work flow when designing a circuit. I’ve tried following the developer’s instructions but still haven’t managed to get it done right.
I get this error message, and I have tried everything I could think of to fix it but to no avail.
‘${KICAD_3RD_PARTY}/Snapeda_kicad_sym.kicad_sym’ is not imported into the Symbol Libraries.
All I want for Christmas is to get this working so that I can carry on with my project. Oh, and btw, if anyone knows of any tools to integrate with STM32CubeIDE, that would be awesome too.
Unless I’m blind, I’m not seeing your Symbol folder. Your screenshots show only 3D models, footprints, templates/etc…and, the Kicad Symbol folder (is that where put your Symbol’s? Shame on you, if so. They will be deleted upon updating kicad). But, that’s your call and has nothing to do with Plugins. Just want to mention it.
Create a user symbol folder and set the path.
Regarding the PCM plugins. If it’s Meta file is broken or other aspects of the full plugin have issues, it won’t get loaded.
You can manually place the Plugin into the Scripting folder and bypass Kicad’s needing the Meta/etc… see my info above regarding my Archive file - placing it is the same steps…
Thank you for pointing that out. In fact, that wasn’t intentional. I believe it was a library that I installed and made it that way. It’s only been recently that I started using external components to kicad’s standard library, which makes it for me not having a lot of experience with it.
Either way, I’ve been wasting time, so I resorted back to manually (sigh) incorporating whatever components I need to add.
Thank you everyone. I wish you all a good year, full of exciting projects and great achievements.
