Buongiorno
Il mio progetto consiste nel realizzare la versione “professionale” di una piastrina di un progetto di un sensore mobile di temperatura, umidità e pressione, caratterizzato da alimentazione a batteria e quindi da un consumo di potenza ultra basso (< 1 μA average). La tecnica scelta è quella del “power-gating” del microprocessore e del sensore, gestito tramite ultra-low power timers (<100 nA). Purtroppo ho dovuto creare simboli custom sia perchè i miei non esistono negli archivi Kicad, sia per evitare il montaggio manuale di SMD direttamente sulla piastrina stampata. Quindi ho creato 5 simboli speciali e le relative impronte speciali dando nomi di fantasia uguali per le coppie simbolo-impronta. Questo primo processo a mio parere è avvenuto correttamente. Quando però mi accingo ad assegnare dallo schema le impronte ai simboli, non avvengono gli accoppiamenti. La cosa che noto è che nella colonna di sinistra della finestra di assegnamento il nome della libreria impronte è presente, ma questa è però vuota. Al contrario se clicco, sempre dallo schema, l’icona “editor impronte”, nella finestra che si apre la libreria delle 5 impronte è presente e contiene tutte e 5 le impronte. Faccio presente che uso la versione 9 di Kicad, e che, cosa non trascurabile, sono un Kicad beginner.
For this once, I pulled your text through a translator (See below).
I see your first tread was posted in English. Please try to translate your text yourself. Keeping to English both improves the forum (Text is searchable, people can learn from each other’s threads) and it eases the task of moderators, who manually check all threads for spam and other types of abuse.
Good morning
My project is to realize the “professional” version of a plate design of a mobile temperature, humidity and pressure sensor, characterized by battery power supply and thus ultra-low power consumption (<1 μA average). The technique chosen is “power-gating” of the microprocessor and sensor, managed by ultra-low power timers (<100 nA). Unfortunately, I had to create custom symbols both because mine do not exist in the Kicad archives and to avoid manual assembly of SMDs directly on the printed board. So I created 5 special symbols and their special imprints by giving equal fancy names for the symbol-imprint pairs. This first process in my opinion happened correctly. However, when I am going to assign from the diagram the imprints to the symbols, the pairings do not happen. The thing I notice is that in the left column of the assignment window the name of the imprint library is present, but this is however empty. On the contrary if I click, again from the diagram, the “fingerprint editor” icon, in the window that opens the 5 fingerprint library is present and contains all 5 fingerprints. I point out that I use Kicad version 9, and that, not insignificantly, I am a Kicad beginner.
Creating custom symbols is a quite normal and common task in KiCad. But it is a guess as of why footprint assignment does not work. Have you tried adding a footprint directly to the symbol from the symbol properties? If that also does not work, then posting a screenshot may help us to give more information.
Hi Paulvdh
Thanks for your reply. The translation from Italian to English is very close to perfection.
I try now to write in your language, as I suppose that you are british and so doing I will compete with your good translater. I am surpriced that there are problems with the assignment of footprints, simply because this is a fundamental step in the whole process of PCB design. Any way I have tried to follow your suggestions but not without difficulties. After several tries I think I have got to the crucial point.of the problem. Working with the schematic and by double cliccking on the individual symbols I obtained the opening of a window which asked for name of the symbol as well as the name of the corresponding footprint. At the end of this work I opened the “assign footprints” window and found there in the middle column the list of all my footprints. Even one in excess which is unknown to me. To check the validity of this result I have to perform the subsequent steps Is now the process automatic, that is, will the footprints placement on the PC printed board be produced automatically or should it be made manually? For the moment I will take a break here to catch my breath a bit as adviced by my ID card. Before starting again I will be glad to receive from you a direction on how to procede further.
Thank you for your help,
nodar10
First, I’m from The Netherlands. My native language is Dutch. I learned my first English by just watching movies on TV, followed up by a more formal education starting from an age of 14 or so.
There is not really a “problem” at all. A footprint for an IC is very often used for a whole lot of different schematic symbols, and each PCB design program has some method of creating and changing the connections between symbols and footprints. It is just an inherent part of the whole process of PCB design.
It’s normal to be a bit confused when you are learning your first schematic & PCB design program, and it requires more steps and manual work then a lot of beginners realize. It’s quite common for beginners to assume that an “autorouter” can design the whole PCB with just a few mouse clicks after the schematic is finished. In the real world, designing the PCB often takes much more time than creating the schematic.
So adjust your expectations, don’t rush things. Read some tutorials and manuals and use them to expand your knowledge.
Note: I also translated the title with deepl.com, and exchaned “fingerprint” with “footprint”.
If you want to get aunswer only from people understanding it than you dramatically reduce your chance to get help.
You must have missed the following chapter:
Footprint placement is something that takes me 70-80% of whole design time. The task is to place everything to let then make all connections. If I were using 4 layer boards it would be easier but until I’m using 2 layer (with one layer 100% destined for GND plane) than positioning footprints to allow to then route all connections (except GND) at one layer is simply time consuming.