Hi. I’m new to KiCAD. (version 9.0.1) Have been a user of Eagle for the past 20+ years. As the guys from Autodesk announced that Eagle will be terminated mid next year, I’m looking for a good replacement. That’s why I’m exploring KiCAD. Surely I’ll have to “unlearn” a ton of things…
First thing that strikes me is that KiCAD is slow and requires many extra steps to get things done, compared to Eagle. Maybe someone in this community can point me to the right spot to make my transition less “painful”?
Meanwhile I’m trying to import components using SamacSys. I got almost to the point where I was hoping to get, but I’m still not there. I figured out how to convert the legacy library format supplied by SamacSys to the current “pretty” format. And I found out how to link a footprint supplied by SamacSys to the corresponding symbol. Now I can transfer the schematic to the PCB editor and get the expected footprints. It’s annoying that this requires so many extra steps ;-(.
What still doesn’t work: When I select a (SamacSys) symbol in the library, I don’t get the footprint for that symbol. I always see “Invalid footprint specified” despite the fact that I linked the footprint to the symbol and I get the footprint in the PCB editor.
Why are you importing a common part like the NE555D when it already exists in the standard library as Timer:NE555D. It even has the correct footprint Package_SO:SOIC-8_3.9x4.9mm_P1.27mm preassigned.
The symbol information seems to ignore the change I made???
The prefix “SamacSys_Parts:” which is shown in the footprint assignment is not shown in the symbol properties.
yes its often much more steps to do simple or complex things in kicad compared to eagle. eagle seemed more like complete “software package”, functions was integrated better/straight on. but you can get used of kicad, or you have to if eagle now finally will die. there is also much help available in this forum.
Footprints can be associated in the symbol which will be the default footprint. It can also be overriden by the Assign Footprint action while editing the schematic, in which case the association is in the schematic, and the symbol is not altered.
Here is the section of the documentation you should read to understand the ways of assigning footprints.
I followed the instructions in the doc: select the symbol in the schematic, select “properties” and made some changes to see what happens.
When I change what is shown, the change immediately affects what is shown in the schematic (in my case: name and value). The location of the footprint was correct.
Saving and restarting didn’t help.
Tried another route: select the symbol again on the schematic, select “Edit main Fields / Edit footprint”. Then selected the desired footprint, which was clearly shown. Saved. Restarted KiCAD. Still no success. Could it be a bug?
Had to go to the symbol editor, select the component’s symbol, migrate the current SamacSys library to the current KiCAD format (kicad_sym), then go to Symbol properties and use the footprint chooser to select the correct footprint for this symbol. After that, the “SamacSys_Parts:” prefix is finally included in the footprint property for the symbol.
The library loader from the site has a rather old version and it cannot convert to the file library format v9. The reason is that each code the kicad developers change the file format of the circuit and board libraries.
Older file format than the used KiCad version doesn’t matter at least between KiCad versions 6…9. Newer KiCad can read and use older formats. Library handling hasn’t changed.
I agree with @m852. The SamacSys lib loader produces .lib, .mod and .dcm files, which I have to convert to to kiCAD’s “pretty” file format. The conversion seems to work - so far - but it’s not as user-friendly as in Eagle, where imports from SamacSys go smooth. No need to mess with libraries to get the job done. I’ve reported the issue to SamacSys.
When you register the old format libraries under Manage … Libraries, you are offered the option to non-destructively convert them to the current .kicad_sym and .kicad_mod format. You should accept the offer. Then the libraries can be modified whereas old format libraries are read-only.
Oh yeah, .dcm file means KiCad version 5 or even older. That’s why I said “between KiCad versions 6…9”. Between those versions only what’s inside the files have changed, but after v5 happened the big leap in file symbol file format and .dcm files were also removed.
Anyway, I reacted to m852’s comment
File format changes between versions from 6 to 9 are not a reason for possible difficulties in library handling when using a newer KiCad version.
