Whenever I try to assign a footprint to a component by selecting its ‘Footprint’ field, I’m brought to the Footprint Library Browser, which doesn’t actually show any footprints:
This was working fine for me when I had an earlier version of KiCad 5, then I upgraded to 5.1.4 and this issue popped up. The weird thing is that I installed a fresh 5.1.4 on a different computer and started a new project and I’m still getting the same problem. Then I went back and re-installed the earlier version that worked, and now even that version has the same problem! I don’t see a lot of people complaining about this online, so it must be something that I’m doing (or not doing).
I can see the footprints using CvPcb and also through the Footprint Editor, so it’s not like the program can’t find the footprints. I’m running on Windows 10.
Do those two computers have something in common? Like exact Windows version (including updates), hardware, especially graphics card, graphics driver software? The most probable culprit is the graphics hw/sw. I can’t imagine this would be something you are doing wrong.
The computers don’t have a whole lot in common. One machine is an old HP PC and the other is a much more modern and powerful Dell laptop which I use at work. Both are running Windows 10, but I’m fairly certain that’s where the similarities end.
Double-clicking associates the footprint with the schematic symbol. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the footprint isn’t being visibly rendered on the screen.
This could be a rendering issue. What is your kicad version? Assuming you are on version 5: can you try switching to the other toolset (fallback vs accelerated)
I’m using 5.1.4. I tried switching back and forth between fallback and accelerated in Eeschema, then checking the Footprint Library Browser. There was no difference either way.
Changing the toolset is a bit weird, each one has their own in Preferences menu which is for that application only (so that they can be changed for each app individually), but there’s one option in Common section in Preferences dialog. Just to be sure, change it once in the dialog, close and reopen KiCad to make sure it was changed for pcbnew and fp editor, too, and see if it has any effect. I’m not very optimistic about the result, but just to be sure.
