hello everyone. I have been having a lot of trouble while using the KICAD especially when it comes to the issue to do with libraries. I always work on a project and as I proceed in the advanced stages, I realize that most of the libraries are missing and I have to search for each and every component library individually until all the libraries are added.
Most of the time I try to search through the internet, am directed to github but of course the libraries in github are not sufficient for the KICAD experts. Is there anywhere I can get all the libraries at once, maybe a link?
thanks!
I don’t remember if you have told which OS (and KiCad version) you are using. On Windows the default installation includes all the official KiCad libraries, and if you chose the defaults when starting KiCad 6.0, the libraries should be there and found.
The official libraries are hosted at gitlab nowadays, not github anymore. I don’t know what you mean by “all libraries in existence”. The kicad gitlab repositories have all the official libraries. You can download and use any 3rd party libraries, but I doubt it would be realistic to expect that all possible libraries in existence could simply be downloaded at once.
Practically everyone needs to create some new symbols and especially footprints, so it should be learned anyway.
Some people use 3rd party libraries, for example the DigiKey libraries which doesn’t cover much. Some use 3rd party services which provide library files for many components which you can search for, SnapEDA and componentsearchengine are two famous ones. Quality may vary.
There is a very common issue with KiCad.
The first time you use certain parts, it asks you if you want it to generate the default library tables.
If you answer no to that question, KiCad does not use any of it’s own libraries even if they are installed.
If you go to: KiCad Project Manager / Preferences / Manage Symbol Libraries you should see a list of some 100 installed libraries, and totaling some 17000 schematic symbols.
If these are missing, then you have to delete the sym-lib-table file from your configuration directory and restart KiCad.
17000 parts in KiCad’s library may seem a lot, but in the real world there are over a million.
There are websites that specialize in making a database of schematic symbols and footprints.
Two of such sites are:
Offtopic:
Experimenting with site previews.
The KiCad website adds a big icon / picture.
During Editing I did nothing special, it just looks like:
Two of such sites are:
https://www.pcblibraries.com/
https://www.snapeda.com/
**Offtopic:**
Experimenting with site previews.
The KiCad website adds a big icon / picture.
https://www.kicad.org/
During Editing I did nothing special, it just looks like:
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