Summary:
I am trying to put my private libraries in a Dropbox folder (windows 10). But when I try to add footprint libraries the Dropbox folder does not show up. But it does show in the symbol library browser.
Details:
In the “Footprint Editor -> Preferences -> Manage Footprint Libraries” When I try to “add an existing library” the Dropbox folder simply does not appear in the file browser.
Following the same procedure in the Symbol Editor the Dropbox folder DOES appear.
Any Ideas?
I need to be able to share the libraries with co-workers.
There is no reason with respect to dropbox unless this folder is somewhat ‘appropriated’ be the OS as special folder of sorts. No issue under e.g. 18.04.3
dropbox in your first image is a windows link to a directory, not a directory itself. I guess you can either make a softlink, or just point the footprint editor to the actual dropbox directory as a workaround.
the same problem has bugged me with Nextcloud. Pcbnew seems unable to find folders when they are linked to a cloud service.
I tried the following with Nextcloud:
Create a new folder outside the cloud service area and name it like the libary folder you want to add. Now add this folder to the footprint library manager. Finally, tell the cloud service to synchronize the folder you created with the respective folder in the cloud.
Not everything that looks like a folder in explorer is an actual folder. Pcbnew only recognizes actual folders (and also file system links but that’s more advanced topic and shouldn’t be confused with windows shortcut links).
You need to figure out where the actual folder for your cloud storage is and point pcbnew there.
It is not a shortcut. When I right click and view the “properties” - it says it is a folder, not a shortcut. Except for the icon, it appears to have all of the same properties as a folder including a size of many gigabytes, and having many files and subfolders. And there is no indication of a link to any other folder.
However, it is obviously not an ordinary folder. And this discussion inspired me to look for the data elsewhere. I found a folder with a different name on different drive that had all of the same files in it. This folder appears to be the “actual” DropBox folder. I don’t know why my Dropbox had been set up this way. This seems to be a solution to my problem. It would be better if the Footprint editor accessed files the same way that the Symbol editor does.
