How to create a layout template

[paulvdh]

@Piotr

… and I don’t know the way to copy a layout to the second project.

Just make a selction of some footprints and tracks, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it in another KiCad instance. For my previous post I tested this to copy from a “standalone” version of the PCB editor, into a project and it just worked as expected.

@Piotr

My solution (5.1.12) is to manually arrange footprints the same way and then copy all tracks (they get new nets correctly), but it is not a copy as it is asked.

I would turn this around.
If you have a discrepancy between footprints, (for example when the link between schematic and PCB is lost) then you can first copy or move the PCB tracks, delete all the footprints, and use the endpoints of the remaining tracks to snap newly imported footprints to. This insures their correct relative position.

I’ve done this a bunch of time whilre reverse-eingineering a KiCad project from Gerber files. See:

Reverse engineering KiCad project from Gerber files

The goal of this reverse-engineering tutorial is to re-create a complete KiCad project from partial information assuming the only information available is a schematic in some readable, (but not EDA form, such as a .pdf or a .png picture), and a set of gerber files. The Gerber files will create a PCB with much PCB information missing, however, using this method is easier than re-designing a PCB from scratch, and can also be extended to any other program that creates Gerber files. What is “resc…