Or copy all library parts of my board into a local library. I have some time and I got fed up to edit the BOM each I time I need it.
I don’t know enough details about your workflow to give a direct answer to your question, but maybe it’s becoming time for you to look into the recently added database functionality in KiCad that seems very important to some of the KiCad users.
I finally want to fix (BOM) info of all the parts on my board. I think best way to do that is to copy parts into one folder, (local library I think) and then use that folder with future boards.
I quess one way to do that is to edit each part and save them somewhere, but there are probably better way for at least for copying used libraries.
1 Like
I copied footprints manually, but I can’t find a way get only project specific symbols. I can edit symbol fields of this project, but how to copy them into my library.
I copied footprints manually, but I can’t find a way get only project specific symbols. I can edit symbol fields of this project, but how to copy them into my library.
Maybe not helpful, but upcoming v7 (nightly version, currently already tagged as release candidat, so already pretty stable and usable) contains a newly added “copy all symbols into an own project-library and replace all symbols on schematic with this newly created library”-function.
So a earlier update to v7 than planned.gives you that feature already now.
1 Like
I don’t understand what you are trying to do.
If you want to have library to use in many boards than it is not project specific.
Before designing my first KiCad PCB I made my own symbol and footprint libraries and I use only them. I have no KiCad libraries at library lists.
I don’t know what KiCad will do if you ask for updating all symbols when you have only your libraries at list. May be that is the way to find which elements you have still to copy to your libraries.
I have started to use V6 few days ago and there are some problems when editing libraries. So may be wait a moment for V7.
BOM should be the output, not the design. If you need to edit BOM each time you use it, it means it’s wrong at the source.
A (relatively) good practice is to keep most part details outside of the schematic, where you keep only the data important from the design point of view (values, footprints) and use an unique ID to identify your “personal” part in the parts database. This way, if you change the e.g. source for your single item, it will be automatically applied to other designs that use the same exact part.
New “Database libraries” in V7 can help in maintaining this approach.
I think LM21 has a bunch of projects for which he added extra info to the schematic symbols (such as part numbers, pricing, etc) to schematic symbols, and he does not want to re-enter that info again for new projects, so he wants to create his own personal libraries with that info already attached, so a BOM can be generated easily without having to cobble together that information again for each new project.
And that is exactly what the new database driven library system is for. But this does take quite some effort, as you have to create the database yourself.
Starting with KiCad V6, schematic symbols are cached in the schematic itself, and as it was new, some functions were missing. You had to hover over (or select) a schematic symbol, press [Ctrl +e] to get it into the symbol editor, and from there put it in a library. This has much improved in V7.0.0-rc1 as mf_ibfeew already wrote, there is now a Schematic Editor / File / Export / Symbols to (New) Library
If you are more visually inclined, you can also create a KiCad project for this and then copy and paste schematic symbols from other projects into this “Library Project”, and then use the export function of V7.0.0-rc1 to do all your symbols with a few mouse clicks. If your “database” is in a single (hierarchical) schematic, then you can also use: Schematic Editor / Tools / Edit symbol Fields to view and change this information.
Paul is correct about my plans. It takes several hours to check every item of the BOM, and I don’t want to do it more often than necessary. Copying and editing my parts to my own global library looks like to be the solution.
I seem to have confused local and global libraries, write protected libraries and writeable libraries.
This change looks very usefull. Kicad is getting better.
.
just FYI… food for thought
I hacked-up a BOM plugin for my customized part/file info…
Did it for CSV and HTML…
Python code reads the file and gets the info and writes output file…
One advantage of this approach is ‘less dependency on Kicad’ versions… and the plugin can be run independently as Stand-Alone App…
snippets below… I’ sure you can imagine the sort of info you’d want…
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.