Hey there,
I’m still pretty new to KiCad and PCB design in particular. I’m trying to convert a few little circuits I made for a few sensors some time ago into nice PCBs, just to learn KiCad / PCB design.
I’ve already created a few simple footprints for things which I couldn’t find in the library. But for the one I’m making right now, I struggle a bit.
My footprint is pretty simple: It consists of one 5-pin and one 4-pin header row and it should also have a mounting hole, as this footprint should hold a little M5Stack Atom. And this Atom has a 2mm screw hole. So I think having the mounting hole being part of the footprint makes sense.
As there’s already plenty of footprints for mounting holes, I just want to reuse one of these. But I really can’t find a way to import or load or merge an existing footprint into mine. The only two promising things won’t import it into mine, but create a new one…
- Tools -> Load Footprint from PCB
- File -> Import footprint from KiCad file
So the only thing left I thought is good old copy/paste. So I opened the footprint I wanted (“MountingHole_2.2mm_M2_Pad_Via”), copied it and pasted it into my footprint. I reassigned the pad numbers for the mounting hole and thought: “Cool, that’s it!”.
But no, it wasn’t… When I added that footprint to my PCB and ran the design rules check, it’s throwing this:
I checked the clearance settings of all those pads and they’re exactly the same as in the origin mounting hole footprint. I just can’t see what’s wrong with it after I pasted it.
This btw does not happen if I import that mounting hole footprint directly into the PCB at this exact same position. This only happens if I c/p it into my footprint and import my footprint together with it…
I just can’t see what’s wrong with it, so what is different to the mounting hole footprint I pasted into my footprint, compared to the original one…
Or is there a real way to import an existing footprint into my own, besides c/p.
Thanks so much and greetings,
Andy!
