I feel like I’m doing something silly here but I’m trying to copy the through-hole pads from one library footprint to another. I just started creating a new footprint for a Phoenix connector that isn’t available and realised I should just copy the pads from a similar part. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to copy/paste between footprints? In the Footprint Editor I was using the ‘Load footprint from library’ button to switch between the two footprints.
I’ve tried copy and paste using the context menu and it seems anything copied is local to that footprint only. As soon as you switch your copy is lost.
Application: kicad
Version: (5.0.1-3-g963ef8bb5), release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
libcurl/7.54.0 LibreSSL/2.0.20 zlib/1.2.11 nghttp2/1.24.0
Platform: Mac OS X (Darwin 17.7.0 x86_64), 64 bit, Little endian, wxMac
Build Info:
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (UTF-8,STL containers,compatible with 2.8)
Boost: 1.67.0
OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
Curl: 7.54.0
Compiler: Clang 10.0.0 with C++ ABI 1002
Forgive me if I don’t understand you issue correctly. My approach has been to open the source footprint, change the default library to my local project library then edit the footprint to what I need and save it to the local library.
OK, thanks. I’d thought about that flow as an alternative but wanted to know if this is a bug or chosen functionality.
I guess a simplified question would be can I copy pad placements from one footprint to another? My experience says no but I don’t see why it would have been implemented that way.
Depending on the level of clone needed, usually you would load then use save-as / edit and finally save.
However, out of curiosity I launched two sessions of footprint editor (one from PCBnew and one from Shell) and then played ping-pong copy/paste.
There is one quirk I found, that took a little figuring out/getting used to as it initially worked sometimes…
In FPE, COPY needs a following mouse click, to ‘stick’, - if you do ^C or Copy, then escape for example, that fails. You must Copy + extra click (+ cursor changes )
Now, you can paste in either direction, into either FPE session, for free pick’n’mix
See above, I think when you close FPE, then re-open it will flush the copy buffers, as they could contain anything at all, so that’s a safe thing to do.
However, by launch of two sessions, you do not close/restart anything, and you avoid that safety step.
This is an annoying usability problem which will be gone in 5.1. Actually that’s intended behavior but it’s not intuitive. It waits for the location reference point which will be used when pasting. You can see the note about it in the status line. In 5.1 the note will be a tooltip next to the cursor so you can’t miss or forget it.
Sounds like an improvement.
It could be nice if the Set Block Origin by Click option, had more than just a cursor+click ? (because things are not always on a clean grid)
eg a right-click choice of use PartOrigin, or pick-list of candidate origins, if multiple entities selected ?
