How to hide component designators?

[tobalt]

I have a board with roughly 1000 components. I wish to remove the designators from silk screen from most of them. I.e. they should not merely hidden from view, but indeed removed so that they will not make it into the Gerber output.

It would be easier to just deselect them all and then just add them back for a few components.

I couldn’t find a way to do this! Even if I select all components, I can’t because I can’t open the properties window any more ?!

Going into each individual component’s properties is obviously not an option.

[der.ule]

You have to use the “Edit text and graphic properties” panel in the Edit menu

There you have to choose what you want to change (Reference designators), from which layer (Silkscreen) and what to do (Uncheck the Visible property).

Hope this helps

[paulvdh]

I also have my “personal preference” for what PCB footprints look like.
Another way to achieve this goal is to:

1. Copy PCB footprints into a personal (Project specific?) library.
2. Update the schematic, so it uses this library.
3. Modify the footprints in your library with your preferences.
4. Schematic Editor / Tools / Update PCB from Schematic, and also check Options / Replace footprints with those specified in the schematic

For your exact use case though, the method der.ule suggest is a lot quicker.

[Piotr]

@tobalt

I couldn’t find a way to do this!

I also could’t find the way to do this (in KiCad 4.0.7) so I decided to have References in my footprints at another layer.

[JeffYoung]

Yeah, I don’t think Edit Text and Graphics Properties is in 4.0.