At first glance, this appears to be a KiCad Environment Variable issue… but I reserve the right to be horribly wrong.
Agreed… I don’t think that this is a settings issue, or op error… That’s why I am posting. Any firmware issue is above my pay grade… Thanks for your help.
I found a work around for the layer issue… Draw the ground plane, save the file, close and open the program… The ground plane is then oriented correctly below the front silkscreen.
The layers are meant to work so that when you select a layer from the rightmost panel “Layers Manager/Layers”, the selected layer is visible above the others.
You can and usually (while routing) should keep planes/zones in outline mode, that can be toggled from the left side toolbar.
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I quote the development version (for the future 5.1) of the Getting Started document:
Note: There are many more ways to add footprints to symbols.
- Right click on a symbol → Properties → Edit Footprint
- Double click on a symbol, or right click on a symbol → Properties → Edit Properties → Footprint
- Tools → Edit Symbol Fields
- Check Show footprint previews in symbol chooser in Eeschema’s preferences and select the footprint when you select a new symbol to place
Even if you would prefer the good old Cvpcb, i.e. Assign Footprints application and there’s something wrong with it, at least you can do the assignments in some other way.
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If you use version 4 or the version 4 library tables then it might be that you get your footprint libs directly from github. (Downloaded everytime kicad needs them. Example everytime you open cvpcb. This can take some time especially if your internet is slow or if github has server trouble.)
The suggestion is to therefore install libraries locally.
Have a look at this if you run version 4: How can i install a specific version of the footprint library?
And at this if you run version 5: I had KiCad 4 installed previosly. Now i updated to v5. Now i have some problems with the library setup
This is only true while moving the item. Once it is set and de-selected, it should seat at the appropriate layer level. In this case, below the front silkscreen.
Neat work-around. I may give it a try.
Thanks for the link. I will give it a look.
I think this is how you want it to behave. I describe how it does behave. It it’s that way on purpose. You could file a wishlist report. But if you want more realistic view you can try the 3D view.
Is this different than the v4 series, because it did not operate this way before?
Ahh… Is it that when I make the bottom ground pour, after I need to switch back to the top layer. If so, what a rookie mistake. I will give it a try…
Doh… Yes, that’s it. I needed to go back to the top layer. My sincere apologies for this part. How embarrassing… I have been using KiCad for a good long while… I’m a Rookie, again… Thanks for straightening me out.
I am still working one the libraries…
It is easy to discover if this is the case. Open the library manager in pcb_new and check if you have any lib with the prefix Housings (example Housings_DIP) if this is the case you run the version 4 footprint libs. (These libs have been renamed to the better fitting suffix Package in the version 5 library)
No, all my libraries are KIGETHUB, or my local custom library file path. So, I could not understand from the instructions, if I need to do the Option #1 steps?
Thanks for your continued help.
Prefix KIGITHUB also means version 4 libs. (Version 5 libs do no longer support the github plugin)
Thank you. I will move on to Option #1 and post my results.
I appreciate everyone’s continued support, very much!
Yes, sirs, that cleaned it up. My deepest gratitude! You all are very gracious with you expertise, effort and time. How amazing, in this era.
I apologize for taking your time, on a known, published issue. My knowledge on this level of firmware was too low to even know where to start. I appreciate your patience.
Now, back to the fun of playing with KiCad!
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Well, everything worked properly, for a while. Then, I shutdown my laptop for the afternoon. When I started the laptop there were no problems.
Now, no PCB file will open from any project. When I click on one, the program acts like it has gone off to open it, but nothing happens at all. There is no fault code, or blinking, etc.
I have tried rebooting, even disconnecting power (the battery has been long removed.) So, I would appreciate your help with what to do next. Thank you.
I did a fresh install. TIme will tell. Thank you.
EDIT: After the install, PCBnew opened once and accessed a project pcb. Then, I tried opening a KiCad project and accessing the pcb. The full problem returned. The pcbs are not opening, but, when you try to open another pcb, a pop-up says that a pcb is running and asks if you want to continue. Thoughts?
You can just continue, KiCad can have multiple instances open at the same time. But it probably doesn’t help if you can’t open some project with even one running KiCad.