Is there a teardrop plugin going for v6.0?

idiotdream · January 11, 2022, 2:09am

when i update kicad from v5 to v6, lot of things changed ,and teardrop plugin can not working again,is there a new plugin exist?

poco · January 11, 2022, 6:31am

Plugin is already working in v6: Yet another Python teardrop script. Adds and deletes teardrops to a PCB. V0.3.3 - #101 by poco

idiotdream · January 15, 2022, 7:08am

that teardrop plugin works ok,thank you,thank NilujePerchut very much!!

GeeMott · February 2, 2022, 8:32pm

Hi, sorry to be such a noob here. Actually I’m rather old, been on computers since the 1980’s, but new to KiCad. Trying to work out how to install this and make it go (Win10). Went to the github link and copied all those source files into “C:\Program Files\KiCad\6.0\bin\plugins\teardrop”. Relaunched & nothing doing. Also copied them all to “C:\Users\GeeMott\Documents\KiCad\6.0\scripting\plugins”, same non-result. Seems like there’s a compile step missing or something?
I have read all 11 pdf help files available at the home page, & not found anything on this topic. Would someone be so kind as to make a “Dummies’ Guide” to walk Windoze users through this?

poco · February 2, 2022, 9:36pm

Hi

In pcb editor go to

3004Y777×528 31.7 KB

Windows explorer window will open;
2. Create a folder “Teardrop” there;
3. Copy contents of zip file, downloaded from github to “Teardrop” subfolder just created;
4. Restart pcb editor.

This is how folder contents should look like:

GeeMott · February 2, 2022, 9:56pm

Remarkable! Thanks a bazillion. The only trick was finding the zip file under the green “Code” button on github. I almost had it - copied all the files from the “teardrops” folder to that path, but not the upper level files in your screenshot. Having .gitignore., license, etc in the right place did the deed. Someday I hope to return the favor.

retiredfeline · February 2, 2022, 11:38pm

Actually .gitignore and LICENSE are only for git’s use and shouldn’t have any effect on deployment. It’s the locations of the “etc” files and directories containing code, especially __init__.py, that matter.

cflin · April 2, 2022, 9:21pm

@poco or anybody who can help: I, too, am struggling with KiCAD 6 plugins on my Linux system. I am not sure how exactly I ended up with plugins in my KiCAD 6. So, I got into the “Plugin and Content Manager” from the main KiCAD menu and uninstalled all of them, I shut down, and restarted my KiCAD6. Through the KiCAD “Plugin and Content Manager” I installed several of them, but not all of them snow up in my PCB editor. The menu they were automatically installed in is ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/3rdparty/plugins, however. The ~ /.local/share/kicad/6.0/scripting/plugins and ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/plugins directories are empty. I am not sure what is going on. Are all of @maui 's plugins working in KiCAD6 now?

qu1ck · April 3, 2022, 12:42am

~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/3rdparty/plugins is the expected directory for plugins to end up in when installing from plugin manager. The other directories you listed are for manually installing plugins the old way (download/extract/copy/paste).

Some plugins may not automatically add a button on the toolbar but should show up in the tools → External plugins menu. You can configure which plugins show buttons in Preferences → Action Plugins. In that same preferences panel you will also see a yellow warning sign button if there are some issues with plugins.

If the plugin you need doesn’t show up in the menus and in preferences then provide following info:

Plugin name
Kicad full version info (check about dialog) and is it a flatpack install or native one
Contents of the window that pops up when you click the yellow button I mentioned above, assuming it appears.

cflin · April 3, 2022, 2:15am

@qu1ck: Yes, you are absolutely right. ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/3rdparty/plugins is the directory the automatic plugin installer operates on. I verified this by uninstalling all plugins and reintstalling the ones I want with the plugin installing tool. However, the (in)visibility selection options do not agree with what I see in ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/3rdparty/plugins. I took a screen snapshot that demonstrates this. On the left you can see the plugin buttons that I can select to be (in)visible and on the right the installed plugins in ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/3rdparty/plugins. (Observe, for example, that [easyw]'s action tools, shown in the directory listing onthe right, do not show up in the visibility selections on the left. There seems to be more visibility selections that entries in the plugin directory!) The other two (legacy, as you said?) plugin directories are empty.

Here is the information I get about my KiCAD installation:

Application: KiCad

Version: 6.0.4-6f826c9f35~116~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.0.4
	libcurl/7.80.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1l zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.3.2 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.3.2) libssh/0.9.6/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.43.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.4.49

Platform: Linux 5.13.0-27-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, LXDE, x11

Build Info:
	Date: Mar 21 2022 17:21:29
	wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.71.0
	OCC: 7.5.2
	Curl: 7.81.0
	ngspice: 31
	Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
	KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
	KICAD_SPICE=ON

qu1ck · April 3, 2022, 2:55am

I don’t see any issues here. Folder names don’t necessarily match plugin names and some folders have multiple plugins.

If you scroll the plugin table in the preferences panel to the right there is a Path column which will show which particular python file and class the plugin comes from.

cflin · April 3, 2022, 6:15am

@qu1ck: OK, thank you. I missed that I could scroll the displayed window sideways to see the path. I am still confused, though, because I don’t see the teardrop plugin and the RF tool plugin among the options of the plugin installer. Do I still have to install those manually? In which directory? Will they work in KiCAD6? (I know Teardrop will, given the discussion in this thread.)

qu1ck · April 3, 2022, 6:53am

If you don’t find some old plugin in plugin manager it’s because either it was not ported to v6 or it wasn’t added to the plugin registry. I think RF tools were not ported (although there are reports that it’s usable) and the tear drops is not registered so you have to add it the old way by downloading and extracting.

Yes. Go to Tools → External plugins... → Open Plugin Directory to quickly get to the right folder.

cflin · April 4, 2022, 6:13am

@qu1ck: Thank you for all your help! I think now I have the plugins for my KiCAD6 under control. For the benefit of everybody, I detail what I have done.:

The automatic installer installs selected plugins in ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/3rdparty/plugins. No more needs to be said about the easy installation through the automatic installer. However, I think the directory ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/scripting/plugins is still used for manual plugin installation.
For the RF tools, I went to GitHub - easyw/RF-tools-KiCAD: KiCAD RF tools: footprints wizard and round tracks, mask expander, via fencing, and clicked on the green “Clone” button. I selected “HTTPS,” copied the git URL into the buffer, and, in the terminal window, from inside the ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/scripting/plugins directory, I cloned the git URL (git clone <URL>). I refreshed the plugins. The RF tools seem to work fine now, except, as per the warning, I needed pyclipper installed. Installing it via my distribution’s pip3 fixed the issue. [Note: The git cloning process must be performed from ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/scripting/plugins. The git cloning will generate the correct subdirectory and, under it, among the necessary stuff, a ./.git directory. From inside the newly-created subdirectory (in this case ~/.local/share/kicad/6.0/scripting/plugins/RF-tools-KiCAD), a git pull can be issued and the whole git subdirectory will be—hopefully painlessly—synced with the remote one. So, in the long run, installing a plugin via git clone may facilitate easier updates.]
I repeated the same procedure with the URL mentioned by @poco on Jan. 11, above (GitHub - NilujePerchut/kicad_scripts: Some kicad scripts) and got the teardrops plugin working. One little tidbit of information here: To select a teardrop, the zone selection must be enabled. I guess KiCAD6 considers a teardrop to be a zone, not a track. This did not matter in KiCAD5, but KiCAD6 has Allegro-like selection filters, so it matters in KiCAD6.
I repeated the same procedure yet a third time for the KiCAD action tools plugin (GitHub - easyw/kicad-action-tools: kicad action plugin tools).
I went to GitHub - jsreynaud/kicad-action-scripts: Some KiCad plugins in Python (as referred to by the RF tools github page) and repeated the same procedure a fourth time. Via stitching is now working in my KiCAD6.

Hope all this helps. You may not need to necessarily clone the git repos as merely unziping/untarring the directories from the github sources may also include the correct ./.git subdirectories, but I used the git clone procedure just to be sure.

Kudos to all authors of these plugins and everybody who takes the time to explain these things in this KiCAD info forum.

system · July 3, 2022, 6:14am

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