I'm having difficulties to find a necessary footprint

Layout Footprints
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Hi!

I’m new to KiCad so I decided to design something very simple. For instance, a so called “USB gender changer” like this one:

Turned out KiCad is very easy to use and it has all the features I need (including mirrored and negative print, autorouter, etc). I must say I liked it much more then EAGLE I’ve been using before. The is only one problem I ran into. I didn’t mange to find an SMD USB Type A Female socket, so I had to use a Type A Male THT socket ( Connectors:USB_A ).

I would like to avoid using THT components though. The reason for this is that most of the time I make home-brewed PCBs using photoresist and THT requires to drill too much holes.

So what should I do in such a situation? Design a footprint manually, install some additional libraries (Google didn’t find anything relevant) or maybe something else?

The environment is Arch Linux x64, packages - kicad 4.0.7-2, kicad-library 4.0.7-1, kicad-library-3d 4.0.7-1.

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You first need to find a connector which is available to you.
Simply using some footprint you find and later finding you can not buy the connector that fits it is no fun.

If you find a connector look for a footprint that fits it. (Sadly the connectors_usb lib is quite empty at the moment.)
I guess there is a high chance you need to design a footprint for the connector you will use.

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I too (until recently… then I discovered OSH Park, and am learning (slight) patience) was a “make my own” hobbyist.

As for footprints: The bottom end of the learning curve is a LITTLE tiresome, but in the end, to have full control over my projects, doing my own footprints is more than worth the pain I put in. It isn’t the best corner of the following, but there is help on the “make a footprint” front at…

KiCadHowTo.com

(If you find that site helpful, endorsement here, Facebook likes, etc, would be very welcome!)

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